Gods Of The Dark Web

(4 customer reviews)
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Description

From the author of Engines of Ruin comes a dark suspenseful novel for fans of Black Mirror, Edward Lee, and cosmic horror.

The internet is a scary place. Beneath Facebook and Twitter is another world. One in which anything can be obtained – for a price. A community of black markets, depraved pornography, and death. This is the dark web.

Leon was just curious. He had heard the stories of the secrets and forbidden fetishes that the dark web offered. He was an activist, protesting against war and hate. But after a protest became violent, he felt he needed protection. Being a teenager with no way to buy a gun legally, he had no choice but to turn to the dark web.

This rash decision sends Leon spiraling down into a dark side of humanity that most don’t know – or even want to know – exists. A world of murder, torture, and cannibalism. But behind all that there is something worse. Something stalking him and intent on ruining every aspect of his life. 

Now, Leon is fighting for his life and reputation as he is being hunted by vile and arcane forces. They are the gods of the dark web.

4 reviews for Gods Of The Dark Web

  1. Jennifer Brum

    An eldritch Lovecraftian god and a cult of depraved followers that find victims using the dark web. Gods of the Dark Web is a short, mean and brutal story about the horrors of the dark web and the vile things that may take place there. This is the urban legend/creepypasta like version of what might be lurking on the dark web. We should all be a little more careful about meeting strange people we found on the internet. I love anything that has to do with the dark web/Internet horror so i just had to read this one when I heard about it.

    There are a few moments in this book that were very gory and extreme so be warned if you have trouble with gore and violence.

  2. Ryan Pascall

    A Stunningly dark story.

    I love horror, always have since I read The Rats by James Herbert when I was 9 and have devoured millions of stories since.

    Unfortunately I have noticed a steady decline in the savagery and horror in tales in the last 20 years and they seem more and more sedate in the handling of horror. Maybe it’s down to the popularity of authors such as Stephen King who excel at character pieces but lack the true bite that I grew up with and crave.

    Due to this I expected further disappointment from this tale as, while the synopsis was really interesting, I figured it’d be another wet fish of a tale… How wrong was I.

    A tremendously dark tale of true body horror with a side-salad of Lovecraft all mashed together with the threats posed by our secondary existence in the internet.

    Beautifully descriptive in all it’s bare-nerve horror and fantastically narrated by Sean Duregger this tale drew me in and held me by the throat through the entire single-sitting listen I did and boy was it a fun ride.

    Horror’s back baby and Lucas Mangum’s at the top with the greats!

  3. Rellim

    I picked this book specifically because Sean Duregger narrated and I loved his performance of Out for Blood. I’m still new to the Horror genre so I can’t really comment on comparing this to other authors or specific subsets. I will say that while I was a little nervous given the reviews commenting on how gory this was, apparently my interest in Police/FBI procedurals prepared me for some of the graphic descriptions in this book.

    At just over 2 hours, this is a quick and intense listen. I did find some of the conversations a little awkward, but overall the story was engaging and satisfying. There’s not much more to impart beyond the publisher’s/author’s summary without spoiling it – but the ending was definitely a surprise. I’m looking forward to checking out more by Lucas Mangum.

  4. Alan Preece

    At 136 minutes Gods of the Dark Web presents more as a novella than a full length novel and at first I thought this would present a story that skimped on detail or presented as a simplified story to fill such a meagre amount of time but as I clicked play and the story began to unfold neither assumption turned out to be true.

    Instead – after a brief, brutal teaser – we are introduced to that character of Niles Highsmith, true crime writer with his own tragic past, and his search for his younger brother who we met in the opening teaser.

    Niles journey takes us through his brothers shadowy world, meeting characters of dubious virtue along the way as Niles grows closer to the mystery of the dark web which swallowed his brother into its writhing depths.

    One of the strongest aspects of the book was Mangum’s ability to quickly produce well rounded characters that seemed to have life outside of the story, something many authors neglect, and the brave stance he takes with these characters. There are no heroes in Gods of the Dark Web, and Niles flaws make it – at times – very difficult to sympathise with him in his journey. A debilitating darkness has infested Niles, perhaps this is due to recent tragic events in his life, or perhaps this darkness is an inherent part of his personality; the latter seems more likely as his brother Leon also travels very dark roads in life.

    Gods of the Dark Web is a dark book, one of those books that fits in the genre often referred to as “extreme horror”, a genre which – though I am a fan of horror – I rarely like. Too often stories I have read in this sub-genre degrade to freak-show mechanics where each scene seeks to top the last in its portrayal of perversion.

    A reader does have to have a strong stomach with God’s of the Dark Web, I would be lying if I told you that you wouldn’t, but the violence portrayed did not seem gratuitous to me but rather a necessary evil essential to dragging the reader into the correct – self-recriminating – state of mind for the end message to work.

    Over all I enjoyed Gods of the Dark Web far more than other books in the sub-genre, well, as much as someone CAN enjoy such a story of course, but this isn’t to say I don’t have criticisms; though they are small ones.

    Personally I think I would have benefited with a little more scene-setting, perhaps a little more time engaging with the world around the characters, making the worlds beats and flavours more immediate. It would have helped me ground the internal worlds of the characters more into our common world, making the story more immediately affecting for me as a reader.

    I also found the narrator an inconsistent one, at times wonderful, with a broad grasp of the characters and a deft “hand” at the dialogue but lacking with scenes that tended to be a little more exposition heavy. In fairness I imagine such a scene would test any narrator, but they are still necessary scenes and still a valid part of any story.

    If you do intend to give Gods of the Dark Web 136 minutes of your time (or 109 pages) you should be warned that this is a violent tale that will unsettle you in some scenes and a reader with a more delicate stomach may be remembering those scenes long after they close the book.

    Of course much like the characters in Gods of the Dark Web; that last sentence will be a warning to some and an invitation to others, just be sure you know which you are before you answer the call.

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