TEST
The Final Dawn is the fifth and final book in Jess Anastasi’s Atrophy series, featuring the motley crew of the starship Imojenna under the command of the super badass, super enigmatic Rian Sherron. This story has been a long time coming; book four, Entropy, was published in 2018 and I confess I’d been worried that maybe the series was going to remain unfinished – so I was jumping for joy when I learned that wasn’t the case, and that The Final Dawn would – at last – complete the series and deliver a story for Rian and Ella, the Arynian High Priestess he rescued way back in book one.
The Atrophy books feature an overarching plotline and an ensemble cast, so it’s advisable to have read at least some of the preceding titles in order to gain a full understanding of the plotlines and characters. There will be spoilers for the other books in this review.
A quick bit of background. An alien race of shapeshifters called the Reidar is slowly infiltrating every aspect of human civilisation and replacing key members of Earth’s industry and government with their own. They’ve so far managed to do this without attracting attention, but Rian – who was captured and experimented on by the Reidar before managing to escape – knows what’s going on and is determined to expose the alien plot and preferably rid the universe of as many Reidar as possible along the way. Each of the books in the series has featured its own self-contained storyline running alongside the main plot as well as a romance that reached an HFN/HEA by the end, but in The Final Dawn, the focus is firmly on the fight against the Reidar and the romance between Rian and Ella who have been striking sparks off each other since they met. Their relationship became considerably more complicated in book four, Entropy, when they were mentally and emotionally connected in an entropic entanglement (which also includes former commando Varean Donnelly – and in case you’re wondering, there are no kinky mind-meld-threesomes here!), and when The Final Dawn opens, Rian is still struggling to adjust to the fact that he and Ella are inextricably bound. After years of distancing himself from everything and everyone, suddenly not being alone in his head, heart and soul is profoundly disturbing. Rian has been unsettled by Ella’s telepathic abilities and her cool, detached demeanour since they first met and has gone out of his way to interact with her as little as possible, trying to ignore his inconvenient attraction to her.
When the book proper opens, the rag-taggle crew of the Imojenna has been laying low in relative safety on the planet of Tripoli while Rian has spent the last eight months on the homeworld of the Mar’keish, a race with similar telepathic abilities to the Arynians, learning about and trying to understand the entanglement and the abilities he has developed as a result of being mentally linked to Ella. He’s also spent that time thinking up inventive ways to kill Ella’s brother Isiah Kinton; he’s sure Kinton has harmed his sister in some way and wants to find out what he did and then make the man pay.
Mar’keish intelligence learns of a likely Reidar gathering at an upcoming interplanetary summit, and if, as suspected, they are getting ready to enact the final stage of their universal domination plan, Rian wants to be part of the Mar’keish delegation. There’s just one snag – Isiah Kinton is going to be there, and word is he’s become extremely interested in Rian over the past few months.
“Aw, has he gone all fanboy over my war hero stories?”
“Think less fanboy and more wants-to-kill-you-on-sight for abducting his sister.”
“If we’re being technical, I accidentally rescued her. He should be thanking me.”
“If by ‘thanks’, you mean he wants to see you arrested and punished, then he’s already way ahead of you.”
Kinton’s presence at the summit will make things difficult but not impossible – Rian will simply have to keep a low profile. (Pfft, right.)
In the meantime, Rian’s crew has learned of his intention to head into Reidar Central, and, with the exception of Ella and Zahli (Rian’s sister), who remain on Tripoli in order to keep Ella safe from her brother, they all head out on the Ebony Winter (Qae’s ship) to provide back-up. Needless to say, things don’t quite go to plan (an understatement) and our heroes quickly find themselves up to their necks in trouble (as per usual).
I won’t say more about the plot, which is fast-paced with an intriguing storyline and some terrific set-pieces, which are so vividly written that they played out like mini-movies in my head. There’s a strongly written secondary cast – most of whom you’ll have already met if you’ve read the other books – and I continue to enjoy the humour – Qae’s smart-mouthed snark and his interactions with Rian are often very funny – the team dynamic, and the found family aspect of the stories.
Rian Sherron has been a pivotal figure throughout the series; he’s Atrophy’s Kirk/Mal/Picard and as such has had a major role in all the other books. His romance with Ella takes a bit of a weird turn here, with lots of psychic/mental … stuff (sex on the astral plane?!) – and I never really understood why the entropic entanglement involved a third-person. In her author’s note, Ms. Anastasi explains that she had originally planned at least one more book in the series, but that “due to circumstances” that hasn’t happened – perhaps the entanglement plotline was meant to have been further developed. But still, the author makes good use of it at certain key moments, and the chemistry between Rian and Ella is as strong as ever, so I can deal with a bit of weird.
The author has dropped hints throughout the series that Ella is much more powerful than she lets on and that her abilities could be used in a truly devastating way should she ever choose – or be forced – to use them in that capacity. Here, we learn more about what those powers are, although I have to say that this is another aspect of the book that didn’t quite make sense to me. Maybe it’s me and I missed something, but I wasn’t wholly convinced by Ella’s sudden transformation near the end.
But that and a few other minor inconsistencies aside, I enjoyed The Final Dawn and would recommend the Atrophy series to fans of sci-fi/space opera and anyone who enjoys a rollicking, action-packed, high-stakes adventure yarn.
Buy it at: Amazon
Visit our Amazon Storefront
Grade: B+
Book Type: Science Fiction Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 21/03/21
Publication Date: 03/2021
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Related Reviews
I read the first three several years ago and wondered if/when the author was going to finish this series. I see where the cover styles have changed again. I’ll probably pick this up at some point to see how it goes with Rian and Ella. Sounds like I should not skip the fourth book to do that though.
BTW, the 4th book Entropy has been retitled The Empty Night.
The whole series has been retitled and re-covered. It’s listed in the back of the ARC I have – but when I checked on Amz after I’d finished reading, they were still up there with all the old titles and covers. Yesterday, I went to check something prior to the review being published, and saw they’ve all been changed. And honestly, I’m not sure it’s a change for the better – I liked the bolder colours of the originals.
I’ll have to go through our reviews of the other books and change the titles.
The first book is free on kindle,so I’ll probably pick that up. My husband enjoyed sci-fi rom as well,so this looks promising for both of us. While I was there,I noticed the author has a m/m romantic suspense series set in TX. Have you read any of those?
I haven’t read that series, no -I’d really like to, but it’s published by Dreamspinner and I’ve made a point of not reviewing or buying their books considering they’re treating so many of their authors so badly (i.e, not paying them).
Got it. That makes sense.
It’s a pain because one of my other favourite series – Fish out of Water by Amy Lane – is also with DSP (audios with Greg Tremblay are fab, too), but I just can’t support a publisher that doesn’t pay most of its authors!