Publisher:
Roundfire BooksPublishing date: June 2025.
About T.R. Thompson
Tom is an Australian speculative fiction writer. He lives in Belgrave on the outskirts of Melbourne with his wife and two young sons.
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.
Click here to visit his official website.
About The River Blade
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.
REVIEW: THE RIVER BLADE BY T.R. THOMPSON
Read more ...T.R. Thompson's The River Blade is a welcome and exciting addition to the science fiction genre. It's an intriguing novel that combines familiar science fiction elements with fresh ideas in a fascinating way. It is a heady mix of well-known and less common elements that are kept together by fluent storytelling.
I found this novel entertaining and rewarding. There are many elements in this novel that remind me of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Blade Runner and The Matrix, but the author's way of handling them feels utterly fresh.
Because The River Blade has a slightly unusual story when compared to other modern science fiction novels, I think it is best not to reveal anything about the actual events and plot twists. If I were to write about the details of the story, I might end up revealing severe spoilers, so I won't mention anything other than what has already been mentioned in the synopsis. Trust me when I say that you do not want to know in advance what is about to unfold, because the story is quite a wild and mesmerising ride.
To understand what kind of a novel The River Blade is, it is good to mention a few words about the River and the Grid. In this novel, technology has evolved a lot and users connect to virtual reality (VR) via data ports. The River is a digital world - a kind of a hub for expanding universes inside the ports that connects the users to VR. As the River evolved and grew, the Grid was created to centrally control all of it. The Grid became the main gathering place and casual users stayed inside it, but those who disliked and loathed what it stood for were pushed elsewhere.
In my opinion, the best thing about The River Blade is that it has a satisfyingly complex structure that adds its own edge to the reading experience. This novel is a tale about three characters - Cass, Poe and Adlai - whose personal stories intertwine as the events unfold. Cass lives out her violent fantasies, Poe is trying to find out what haunts the streets and Adlai sits at a bar and observes what is happening. The story is divided into three parts, which consist of segments (each of the segments focuses on one of the characters as a protagonist).
This novel is one of the few science fiction novels that I've read in which the swiftly moving narrative is in balance with the characterisation - everything about the story is just as fluent as it should be and nothing is over-stretched or unnecessarily prolonged. It is a relative short novel, which does not overstay its welcome, but leaves you satisfied with its story.
The worldbuilding aspect of the story works well. The author has created an interesting digital world that feels alive and vibrant, not to mention mesmerisingly dark and threatening. I was fascinated by the River, because the VR world changed over time and everything that has happened has led to the point of virus being freed in the world. The evolvement of the River has a sense of inevitable change that I find intriguing, because the author fluently tells of how the Grid gained a place inside it and became its sole controller.
I was fascinated by the musical virus, because it infects users and feeds on their fears. The virus has originally been designed to take down the Grid that controls and governs the River, but it has gone rogue and threatens the very existence of the River. It is extremely dangerous as it grows stronger with each kill and causes havoc.
As a big fan of weird fiction, I have to mention that the quote from "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft at the beginning of this novel perfectly sets the mood for what is to follow.
T.R. Thompson's The River Blade is a fascinating and rewarding reading experience for readers who enjoy swiftly moving science fiction stories. It deserves to be read by those who appreciate well-told stories that differ from the norm.
Highly recommended!
