I don’t normally read books about terrorism but one about cyber-terrorism sounded like something I could sink my teeth into. Here’s a copy of the blurb from Amazon, if you want to read it:

When a hacker known as G0d_of_Internet hijacks millions of computers to do the bidding of an Islamic jihadist group, their first act is to disrupt the water treatment systems in Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles. Next, the power grids go down. Is this the start of a digital world war?

The only thing standing between the terrorists and their goal to weaponize the internet is a small band of white hat hackers, including cybersecurity guru Mahaz Al-Dossari and his wife Juliana.

The search is on for a couple hundred lines of code and a global hacker network before they can make good on their ultimate threat to divert money from the world’s banks. But G0d_of_Internet has been tracking their every move. And it’s Juliana, a PR manager lacking in technical skills, who may hold the key to unmasking the hacker.

I just re-read that for the first time since I started the book and I have to say it’s sort of misleading. Particularly who was involved with the white hat hackers and that anyone but the black hat hackers knew what the threats actually were before they happened.

It’s going to be hard to give a complete review of this book without giving spoilers so I’ll have to stick to impressions instead of specifics.

I was pretty involved and happy with the first several chapters. The story was compelling and the characters kept me interested. I made my first prediction as to who G0d_of_Internet was at the 25% mark but figured it was too obvious and looked forward to getting more clues. I thought I’d change my guess a few more times before the real bad guy was revealed. At 52% I was really hoping that my first guess was a drawn out red herring because no other suspects were being brought forth. By 96%, I was thoroughly disgusted by how easy everything fell into place and by the fact that so much had to have been going on for so long and the people closest to the bad guy never had any clue. There is so much I want to say about this but I don’t want to give away anything more. I checked a few minutes ago and this book is getting really good ratings and reviews so maybe it’s just me.

I thought the book had a lot of promise but the overwhelming number of things that didn’t make sense or that were just too easy made me happy to be done with it. I think if someone’s looking for a quick, easy read, this would be fine but anyone looking for a complex plot and characters with depth will be disappointed.

I received God of the Internet from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

You can download a sample or purchase God of the Internet by clicking here.