Book Review: Gods of the Dark Web by Lucas Mangum

Gods of the Dark Web by Lucas Mangum

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


There are so many good things to say about "Gods of the Dark Web" that I hope I can cover them all in this review. This is Lucas Mangum's first release on Deadite Press and earns him is spot among contemporaries like Brian Keene and Ed Lee. The story moves along a breakneck pace that starts from the first age and never stops until the brutal last page. I love the idea that ancient gods have found physical form among outdated computer and networking equipment and that they have a cult of followers who use the dark web to track and capture people to use as sacrifices. GOTDW is narrative driven, the characters exist to either be horrible people or have horrible things happen to them. Sometimes both. There are many horrors within the book's scant 93 pages, most of which are far to explicit to describe in a review. There's disembowelings, infanticide, cannibalism, golden showers, and sexual degradation packed into nearly every page. Mangum's descriptive powers are as strong as his imagination and take the reader deep into a world so horrifying that you want to put down the book, but can't because it's so good.

I'd really love seeing this story eventually fleshed out into a longer work. An extra 50-100 pages could easily bring the characters more life and give them a more detailed back story and, of course, many more gruesome delights to shock and scare. GOTDW is a must read for fans of cosmic and extreme horror.



View all my reviews