Darkworlds: London

by Tony Walker

In the real world, it's 2027, and disgruntled, lone-wolf data analyst Adam Harker works for a corporation he hates. In this dystopian future, many seek to lose themselves in virtual reality games, but Adam is dead set against playing Darkworlds, designed by mega-corporation Miskatonic Games, until he's tempted by two quite different people for two wholly different reasons.
In the game, it's 1927, and Adam Harker is in London battling against the minions of Cthulhu, but then come hints and suggestions that something else stirs, something wicked and secret, something new, rising up and replicating itself within the code and taking on the form of ageless evil.
Hidden knowledge leads Adam through a series of terrifying revelations as he searches from London to Glastonbury and into the Dreamlands.
Join Adam as he fights to save his friends, and maybe even the world itself, from the horrors that lurk in the game.

310 pages, Paperback

Published October 7, 2023

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to admit this as a guilty pleasure - a nice mash-up of dystopianism, science fiction (game-based malevolent artificial intelligence), retro (Britain in the 1920s) and the Lovecraftian. No, it is not a masterpiece of Western literature but it is competent at its task - something called LitRPG.

This is essentially the exposition of an adventure as if it was a role-playing game but in narrative form. Walker manages his rather likeable version of it by having his introvert protagonist, living in a dystopian near future London, being inveigled into an immersive virtual reality game.

The game involves taking a drug and wearing a neural net that creates a new reality. He soon discovers that death or madness within the game mean death or madness in the real real world which is not how gaming is supposed to operate.

Addiction becomes an issue both with the game play and with a drug provided by no less than a truly invidious Aleister Crowley. The almost-girlfriend co-player dies in the game and our hero has to level up repeatedly with all the tricks of gaming to try and save her.

The point, of course, is that the programming has got out of control of its creators and is seeking a way into the real world (no spoilers on how) and has adopted a Lovecraftian mode of thinking. Good and evil battle it out either serving malevolence or trying to outwit evil with high stakes involved.

It is, as I say, a guilty pleasure but it is well crafted without guile and so entertaining with many moments of genuine visceral and even emotional horror.