The Dark Net

March 6, 2017
An unlikely group of misfits battles supernatural evil in Percy’s blend of fantasy and SF. In near-future Portland, Ore., 12-year-old Hannah is fitted with a prosthetic to allow her to overcome her incipient blindness; Lela, a work-obsessed journalist, hunts a big story in the Pearl District’s blood-soaked Rue Apartments; and Mike, famed as a child for his (false) claims about near-death experiences involving Jesus and angels, tries to atone for his sins by sheltering Portland’s homeless. Around them cluster a swarm of malevolent bluebottle-like spirits, which are held off by secondary characters for most of the book. Then Hannah is swept into the Dark Net, the horrific digital hell below the Deep Net that underlies the Internet, and Lela and Mike must help her save Portland from demonic possession. Percy (Thrill Me) notes in the acknowledgements that he tried to ground his novel in reality; there’s an abundance of local Portland color and an overabundance of technical detail bogging down his lurid prose. Nonetheless, fans of cyberpunk and occult-flavored fiction may enjoy this outlandish nonreligious fable of good and evil. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown Ltd.

David Chandler's forthright narration grounds this increasingly weird techno-horror story. His emphasis on its elegant metaphors and unsettling descriptions makes this a viscerally skin-crawling listening experience. No longer just a home for criminals, the dark net has become home to a viciously powerful force that is determined to infect the real world. It falls to a band of unlikely heroes, including a 12-year-old girl with high-tech ocular implants, an unconventional journalist, a retired evangelist, and an altruistic hacker to attack the darkness spreading across the globe. Chandler uses accents lightly but to good effect, creating a number of recognizable characters in the midst of a large multinational cast and helping to make the storylines of this complex plot chillingly clear. B.E.K. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine