The Final Dawn (Final Dawn, Book 1)

Very good read.A rag-tag band of escaped droids struggle for freedom, a fight to find a fabled sanctuary.A man lost and far from Earth, finds himself with not choice but to join the escaped droids as they run for their lives.

Very different and refreshing. Love the storyline and the characters. Easy to pick up and put down. I’m right with them, on the ship and ready for the next adventure. Thank you TWM.

Nice take on the astronaut stranded in space .Character development is good and has left plenty of space for further expansion and back story

Fast paced and seemed a bit like a Western at times. Automata have a feminine style rather than being bland robotics. Very light on Science...what exactly is 'skip drive' and why is 'wormhole' technology dangerous?

I do not read sci-fi. In fact, I avoid it. I am a history nerd. I read history. I write history, and live it sometimes too.However! One day I got a random email from Amazon suggestions and, being intrigued, thinking it was another book on the intricacies of 18th century warfare, was slightly concerned to see only a single book as its recommendation.This book.Why it recommended me a sci-fi book I have no idea, and a single one? Not a clue. But I liked the cover. I won't lie, it sparked my curiosity.So I read the blurb. My heart raced the more words I read. It was exciting, and the story question original, so I took a chance, hid the phone away from my girlfriend, pretended I was reading yet another military memoire, and spent the £2.And oh my! What a story. I cannot tell you how engrossed I was in this story. I haven't read a fiction story since half a year ago by B. Cornwell, and yet this, unlike historical fiction, completely and utterly blew me away.Thrilling, exciting, funny, enticing. It read more like a movie in my mind. Oh of course, I had no idea what half technological components he was writing about did (it was easy to follow, and I looked some up), but I loved it so much.This isn't just the only sci-fi book I have ever read, it's also my favourite book I have read in a few years. I'm hooked on the characters, the plot, and the description. Perfect. Simply perfect.I am a bit sad the story ended. But to hell withcthsy sadness, I am going to buy book 2 straight away after this review.If T.W.M Ashford can turn a history geek into a sci-fi fan, then that alone speaks of his mastery in story-telling. An unforgettable emotion thrill ride which, in my humble opinion, should be brought to Movie screens as soon as possible.It may be 1:40am in England right now, but it's the weekend, and I'm going to spend the rest of the night reading more.Thank you for writing this book 😄

"What sort of idiot thinks he can single-handedly commandeer the bridge of a battlecruiser?" Jack whispered to himself, clenching his jaw.This... was... Fantastic! Every single page oozed brilliance. Brilliant written, gripping throughout.The sun is dying and it's going to take Earth with it. Humans have built arcs to take a limited amount of people away. But they haven't figured out how yet.Jack is an engineer working on the arcs, his life takes a drastic turn when he is asked to accompany the army because they need extra hands.He overhears a conversation about wormhole travel and how they need more pilots to test on. Jack jumps at the chance. Unfortunately the test goes wrong and Jack is teleported millions of light years away.He is saved by a race of sentient machines known as the automata. The events that follow this mean that Jack has to fight to survive on several new planets against many new species all the while gaining trust of the flesh hating automata and their enemy.5* I will be buying the rest of the series right now.

I liked what I read of this. It just ... wasn't at all what I was expecting from the cover and the blurb. I was expecting something more adult, post-apocalyptic sf. Instead it was bordering on humour with the interaction with the automata and the subsequent planetary visit, which is where I stopped reading. Don't get me wrong, it's well-written and doubtless perfect for the Douglas Adams market. I just wasn't that market. And that's a shame because I suspect there are a lot more readers out there who won't find this book because the blurb and cover don't represent the story, in my opinion.

The plot went quickly off at a tangent I didn’t see coming, into a refreshingly different direction.There are quite a few gaps in the narrative about the robot cast, the societal structure (doesn’t appear to be any) and the back story to the bad guys (several of whom are quickly rendered extinct!) . However the book rattles along merrily, and I’ll probably read the sequel to see if any of these thin areas are padded out a bit.