This sounded like such an engaging, unique technological thriller, but it was such a slow build up. Majority of the action happened within the last third of the book, and by that point, I wasn't as invested. The premise wasn't anything out of the ordinary, and I wasn't a huge fan of the paranormal elements either.

I got about halfway through this book, and just couldn't sustain my interest. I liked the subject matter -- I spend some time trying to understand the dark net in my professional life -- but just couldn't get engaged.

Not the most original but a good yin/yang battles with scenes of bloody action that many will enjoy. Have fin with the girls and the "super dog" and enjoy the ride

So 👍!!!
I really enjoyed this! It was a great page-turner, à la Michael Crichton. It managed to be really informative while at The same time being extremely suspenseful. I'm looking forward to reading Blood Moon. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in the Dark Net.

The Dark Net, in theory, sounded like a great techno-thriller. Demons on the web, working their way into people’s lives through technology and ‘virtually’ unstoppable. Unfortunately the dark net hardly had any part in the story. The demons were using the dark net for their plan, but other than a few brief mentions and not very much detail at all the books namesake was tossed out the window. So much for supernatural techno-thriller based on the dark net.

The first 60% of the book is spent on setting the story up. You meet a character, follow them and learn their backstory; then hop on over to another character, follow them and learn their backstory. Honestly it’s really tedious, and this is from the girl who loves characterization over anything in her books. But during that time the book is so very slow and hardly any of the plot moves forward.

Then there’s our antagonist. There isn’t really a main antagonist. A couple of baddies with names pop up, and maybe toward the very end we finally see someone who could be called the ‘leader’, but none of it is ever mentioned.

The story just seems like it’s in bits and pieces; as if the author pulled ideas from this story and that story and tried to make them fit together and it didn’t quite work out right. The book itself didn’t know what it was supposed to be and the characters forgot their lines and were on the wrong set and missed their cues. A downright jumbled mess.

I am usually in to techno-fiction but this one left me wanting something more.

A brainchild between Clive Barker, Greg Bear, and Edward Lee, The Dark Net scared the hell out of me. Percy keeps at it, reinforcing this paranoid fear by doing what great horror writers of his caliber are known for: they make you believe the stories they write. If only for a moment, and that moment is more than enough. With fantastic execution, Percy slithers fragments of this horror into the reader’s subconscious, making them experience things on an imaginative level. Something you couldn’t explain. Dismiss. Ignore.

However, it would be illogical of me to keep comparing certain aspects or elements of The Dark Net to other existing work, because put simply: it is nothing like your average run of the mill sci-fi horror book. Read that again. Sci-fi horror. I don’t scour the web every two minutes or delve into the vast multitude of sub-genres (horror steampunk being a new trend you’ll be seeing soon) but I’m quite certain not many mainstream novels have quite wholly embraced horror and science fiction as a combined ingredient. Naturally you’ll find a few if you look carefully enough, then again not many would risk it for the sake of juggling two very different and yet eerily similar genres (here’s looking at you, Dead Space) in the hopes of producing something that would be an instant hit.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview The Dark Net.
The Dark Net takes the reader on a dystopian journey that is scary and sometimes realistic. Great for fans of Syfi and Fantasy.
Good Read.

First thought when I finished early, early this morning - WOW!

I had such a hard time deciding on reading this book. I loved Benjamin Percy's book "Red Moon" and was so excited to see this one offered by him. However, I was concerned with there being a lot of "geek speak". Well, there was some, but not a lot. I do remember one time when my eyes were crossing but that feeling did not last long. There was a lot of "freak speak" which I was used to in the author's other book.

This suspenseful, action packed thriller had me mesmerized. I stayed up way too late to finish it. I kept putting it down to sleep. Then, I would pull it back out and read some more. I could not leave it even though my body was telling me "it will be there in the morning".

A great read which I truly enjoyed!

Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

This book wasn’t what I expected. I was looking forward to inventive techno-horror… but didn’t really get that until the final third of the book. Instead, we spend time with the main characters as they deal with the evil building up in Portland as the literal gates of Hell threaten to spill open and engulf the world. Parts of this book feel very 70s-throwback-ish, like The Omen with technology, as all sorts of demonic entities, including hellhounds and various gross and disgusting things come teeming out at people from dark corners… and it’s up to our ragtag bunch of misfit heroes to save the day.

In the final part of the book, we see how the forces of evil use the ubiquitous network of tech to infiltrate every person’s consciousness, providing a dire look at just how wired in and dependent we truly are (as if we had any doubt).

The Dark Net is a quick, sometimes gross, sometimes scary read that frightens more with its reflections on our lack of privacy in our cyber-dominated lives than by its invocation of demons and evil gaining world domination.

I finished The Dark Net a few days ago, and held off writing a review to allow myself to stew over it to see if I could make any sense whatsoever of what the hell I just read. At first glance, this novel is trying its damnedest to be something of a mix between a Gibson-esque future, and a modern day techno thriller. And at a surface level, I suppose it is. The closer you look, and the further you read, The Dark Net begins to unravel and all you are left with is a twisted hot mess of a novel that is impossible to follow, and has no depth or substance to it. I have left the over-long synopsis in with my review, as the novel defies my attempts to explain its plot.

I got about 20% of the way through the novel and realised that I had no idea what the names of any characters were, and by about 60% of the way through I realised I didn't know what was going on. There are so many moving parts to this novel, but how they are connected, and if they are connected is a mystery buried deeper than the latest incarnation of The Silk Road. I finished this book but only through sheer bloodymindedness at actually finding a relatively promising cyberpunk novel.

There was something which nagged at me for a long time while reading the book, in that the premise and setup reminded me of another novel. I realised that it was the WWW series by Robert J Sawyer, which also featured a blind girl who used a maguffin to see the world around her. I made it through the first book in that series before it jumped the shark - something involving an orangutan addressing the United Nations as I recall... The point is, I didn't like that series, and this felt like a poor man's ripoff of that better written, if equally preposterous series.

The parts of The Dark Net which were original were not particularly interesting, and the parts which were interesting were not original. It lacked any kind of cohesive structure, and it just felt like an attempt at writing an experimental literary piece. There's a reason I don't generally write literary fiction, and it is largely exemplified in just how bloody annoying this book was. This is an over-long, over-written, under-structured pile of dreck that should not have seen the light of day. I was disappointed at what this book was compared to what it might have been, and that is the greatest sin an author can commit for me - to disappoint the reader.

Please, for the love of god, run away from this novel as fast as you can. Re-read Neuromancer, or one of Neal Stephenson's early cyberpunk novels instead. You will thank me for it.

In The Dark Net paranormal technology meets an evil-fighting squad.

The book is about unlikely characters coming together to fight evil. This evil comes in the form of technological threats as well as supernatural demons.

Yep.

I imagined the story would be completely different based on the description of the book, I thought it would be more of a technological thriller like Digital Fortress by Dan Brown but is more like a horror-fantasy book from Stephen King.

The book is narrated from different points of view. The characters are very different from each other and well-drawn by the author. The story is chilling and fast-paced.

The book is similar to The Stand and The Gunslinger, both books by Stephen King. I recommend the book if you like stories with elements of fantasy, technology and horror.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this publication in exchange for an honest review.

Mystery, Thriller, Urban Fantasy, Horror, Tech Suspense

The ".net" stuff here is a bit of a stretch, but the Dark is real. Actually, I feel sort of sorry for this author. Now that Norton's and Experian and so on are trying to scare people with TV commercials about their private info and the "Dark Net", the whole concept is being trivialized. And that's a shame, because Benjamin Percy has written a moody, fast-paced, and driving urban techno-horror thriller.

We start with a structural approach that doesn't always work. The scattershot, multi-character view opening. We follow the driven journalist Lela. We turn to a guy, Juniper, running a homeless shelter. We follow a character running a server farm for nameless scary guys. Hannah, a young girl with a virtual tech visual prosthetic appears on the scene. Derek is the requisite cyber-genius hacker. Sure, they're going to hook up or at least cross paths at some point, but how, when and why? Often, this can try a reader's patience and resolve. But, Percy writes so well and surrounds each character with such portent and darkness, that we follow each one's story because we know that the payoff will be worth it. Lela finds something; Juniper suspects something; Hannah fears something.

In no time we have a skeleton, the story of a bygone serial killer, bloody handprints, hounds from hell, and a nasty man in black. This is all happening in Portland, where apparently it's always raining and always nighttime. NO PLOT SPOILERS, but all of the good guys do eventually hook up, the evil threat comes into focus, and action needs to be taken. There's a lot of techno-fantasy, but since when was the internet all that different from magic anyway?

Lots of urban fantasy is clever ideas and maybe mood, but this book is well written. Mood and atmosphere are built from the ground up, with compelling descriptions, creepy details, sharp and smart dialogue. Percy doesn't just hit the standard buttons, he works for his chills and makes his own darkness. He takes his time and adds the extra bit that makes everything more real and more convincing. To me that elevated this book above run-of-the-mill devil-in-the-cpu stories, and made this a very satisfying read.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

If you know anything about the internet then you've likely heard of the Dark Web, which is basically the underworld of the internet, where all sorts of nefarious transactions and activities supposedly take place. Benjamin Percy has taken this world and added a little supernatural insanity for our reading enjoyment.
In this techno/thriller, Percy gathers a collection of odd characters and misfits and pits them against demonic forces that are attempting to use the dark net- and the darkness that dwells inside most of humanity- to force their way onto our plane of existence. Not everyone will survive the battle, but readers who like their sci-fi reads with a little mayhem and a heavy dose of computer nerds will have a fun time riding along.

Being a fan of Benjamin Percy i was thrilled to get my hands on The Dark Net . This thrilling techno horror novel is an addictive story . Imagine a world obsessed with technology phones . computers , tablets, TV . Now Imagine that the dark web is infested with demons. Twelve year old Hannah is fitted with a new tech prosthetic to combat her blindness. This device also allows her to see auras . Throw in her techno phobe Aunt and a former Evangelist to fight demons of the dark web and you have a trill ride you won't soon forget

Thank you netgalley for the advanced copy! I completely agree with the other reviewers when they speak of the summary for the book, I don't think the person who wrote it, read it. It's entirely misleading. The book is an apocalyptic horror story, and i enjoyed it. It's a different fan base though, and I'd market it to different patrons after reading it.

I was stuck in an airport for six hours yesterday and read through the entirety of "The Dark Net". It will probably be in my top books of the year -- the first half especially is amazing. It's scary, thrilling, and not what I expected it would be about, but in a good way. Talk about pleasantly surprised.

I would recommend this for fans of Blake Crouch's "Dark Matter" especially. An amazing read. The imagery in particular made me feel like I was watching a movie. Thank you for getting me through airport delays with an amazing read.

A creepy, crazy techno-fantasy! Loved it! Great for fans of Neil Gaiman or Neal Stephenson.

I enjoyed this fantasy horror tale, but did find the blurb a bit misleading - the "dark net" doesn't figure in the story very much and I was disappointed by that - I thought it would be more of a techno-thriller but it is definitely high fantasy/horror. I would steer thriller readers away from this one, but would definitely recommend it to fans of Stephen King, Joe Hill and Adam Nevill.

can’t remember how I discovered Benjamin Percy’s unique brand of literary horror, but I do remember being excited to receive an Advanced Reading Copy of Red Moon back in 2013 while working as a bookseller. I was similarly excited to receive a digital galley of his new supernatural cyber-thriller The Dark Net.

Having recently read Thrill Me, Percy’s semi-autobiographical collection of essays on writing, I was curious to see how well he applies his theories to his own fiction. Fortunately (as Karen Russell proclaims on the cover) he practices what he preaches, fleshing his characters and their world out into a cautionary tale about the dangers of technology that manages to be both horrifying and heartbreaking. One of the things I appreciate most about Percy’s writing is his ability to turn a phrase–while I was reading, I found myself highlighting passages on my tablet so I could come back to them later.

In Thrill Me, Percy advises writers to ensure their story contains at least one iconic set piece–he uses the locker room and pig’s blood scenes from Carrie as an example–that their readers will remember long after they finish the book. He achieves that here, continually upping the ante in one particularly harrowing sequence of murder and mayhem that echoes the opening of Stephen King’s Cell. It will definitely have you thinking about our collective over-reliance on digital devices.