Dark, Darker, Darkest – these are there deepths of Darknet delived by Eileen Ormsby in a book which is a result of jurnalists investigation. This book is surely to be recommended, to both passionats of tech as well as layans on the subject.

The book was published first in 14 Mar 2018, with a title: The Darkest Web: Drugs, Death and Destroyed Lives…(etc.). It was renamed for Darknet and published in Poland on 13th May 2019.

We heard about it during the summer and decided to purchase it for our library without reading it beforehand. Which is a rare thing…

Eileen Ormsby is a former Australian lawyer living in Melbourne. Dissapointed by her corporate work she turned to online jurnalism and became one of the world’s leading experts on the dark web. Ormsby’s interest with dark web has started with the Silk Road – she symphatized with idea of denoucing the drug prohibition. Her interest led to long time investigation and in the end it brought her first book: published in November 1st 2014, titled: Silk Road.

During her investigation she got acquainted with first revolutionary online drug market. She researched it’s issues, scams and cryptocurrency reality of darkweb. She interviewed and corresponded with criminals – slowly becoming an expert on the subject. Which spawned finally the most popular Darknet publication so far.

The book itself is a good example of narrational jurnalism. It’s a quick and addictive read. It gives a great account of history of the Silk Road (Dark), Besa Mafia (Darker) and child pornography in Darknet (Darkest). It does not give you specified directions on how to get the the “other side” of the internet, but clearly explains ways to get there as well as the good uses for it.

On the down side what the story lacks are specifics about the investigation process itself. After all the author spent 5 years reaserching the subject, and we can see that just by reading. Still it would be cool to find out how did she get the informations, how did she dug up history of these sites, and what was the though process behind it all. I also admit I would like to read more about, well… all three chapters. And I belive that the author should still have more stories to tell.

For me the best quality of the book was that it dispells certain myths that was created around darknet while clearily stating what are the real dangers of it. It gives you a good perspective on the subject with relatively little effort.

Anyways the book is to be recommended for any adult. It sheds light on what happens on the other side of the mirror. And this is something everyone needs to know – even if they don’t want to.