Overview: The River Blade: A Novel is a remarkable synthesis of Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick, dreamed up in the mind of Ridley Scott.

Verdict: For Cass, it’s a place to escape the dull grind of her lonely life, a place where she can run its twisted laneways and live out her violent fantasies.

For Detective Poe, it’s a beat to walk, a dark, dangerous environment to hunt down his clues and get closer to whoever, or whatever, is haunting its streets.

For Adlai, sitting drunk in a bar on the border between the River and the real world, it’s a place to watch his creation transform from a theatre of heroism into, hopefully, something more vital.

While these three stories intertwine throughout the novel, one thread pulls them together: the nightmare vision walking the streets, a rogue musical virus that infects its users and feeds off their fears, growing stronger with each kill.

Designed to take down the corporate powers of the Grid, a powerful governing entity on the banks of the River, this weapon has gone rogue, harvesting any user it comes across, threatening to collapse the entire structure of the River itself.

Facing this threat, each character is altered, entangled with others looking for something real to hold onto in a world of technology and fantasy.

From the very off, author T.R. Thompson grabs the reader’s attention and very rarely lets it go (and if it does, it is not without a fight, believe me).

In what is a very compelling, confidently alluring, dutifully constructed new story from the Australian speculative fiction writer, we drop into an exciting opening page and sink willingly inward into the infectiously written prose with every page turn thereafter.

The world building that takes place here is incredible, simply breathtaking at times, all of which expertly help bring the vicarious textures of the VR/Sci-Fi world effortlessly to our inquisitive minds.

About the Author - TR Thompson is an Australian speculative fiction writer. When not writing or reading he spends too much time gaming and taking long meandering walks through the forest that always seem to end up at a tavern. He lives in Belgrave on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia.

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