The Dark Net

“An imaginative, spooky, swiftly paced tale.” — Dean Koontz

“Masterful crafting...a horror story for our times.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

The Dark Net is real. An anonymous and often criminal arena that exists in the secret far reaches of the Web, some use it to manage Bitcoins, pirate movies and music, or traffic in drugs and stolen goods. And now, an ancient darkness is gathering there as well. This force is threatening to spread virally into the real world unless it can be stopped by members of a ragtag crew, including a twelve-year-old who has been fitted with a high-tech visual prosthetic to combat her blindness; a technophobic journalist; a one-time child evangelist with an arsenal in his basement; and a hacker who believes himself a soldier of the Internet.

Set in present-day Portland, The Dark Net is a cracked-mirror version of the digital nightmare we already live in, a timely and wildly imaginative techno-thriller about the evil that lurks in real and virtual spaces, and the power of a united few to fight back.

“This is horror literature’s bebop, bold, smart, confident in its capacity to redefine its genre from the ground up. Read this book, but take a firm grip on your hat before you start.” — Peter Straub

"Written in vivid, often lyrical prose, but with exhilarating comic-book energy, The Dark Net is a megawatt defibrillator to the reader’s heart. Quirky but very human characters confront an explosive emergence of the supernatural into our world, in this imaginative, spooky, swiftly paced tale threaded through with dark humor." Dean Koontz

"Percy takes the darkest conspiracy theories you can imagine and makes them the stuff of nightmares....humankind is held responsible for its irresponsibility, paying the price for all the convenience we take for granted, for our obsession with the digital world...the message is effective and scary...there's something undeniably creepy about the thought that your smartphone can possess you. A gory cautionary tale." Kirkus

"A rich mash-up of suspense, techno-thriller, horror, and the supernatural, Percy pulls it all together with a terrific cast of characters, finely-tuned plot twists and killer prose, sprinkled generously with spot-on snark and fun puns, as well as lovely turns of phrase." Seattle Review of Books

"Benjamin Percy's distinctive brand of horror fiction...is on full display in The Dark Net. The novel blends aspects of techno-thrillers with supernatural horror for page-turning results. Percy is no stranger to unlikely genre fusions, but The Dark Net's idiosyncratic brew is particularly enticing." Shelf Awareness

"Masterful crafting...a horror story for our times." Minneapolis Star Tribune

Benjamin Percy has won a Whiting Award, a Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the author of the novels The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding, two story collections, and an essay collection, Thrill Me. He also writes the Green Arrow and Teen Titans series for DC Comics. He lives in Minnesota with his family.