The Damned Trilogy

A Call to Arms, The False Mirror, and The Spoils of War

By: Alan Dean Foster

Narrated by: Mikael Naramore

Length: 36 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

Humans are caught up in an alien war in this epic from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Trek Into Darkness.

For millennia, the Weave, an alliance of species, have fought to resist the telepathic Amplitur, who strive to unite all self-aware life-forms in their great "Purpose." The Weave is slowly losing ground, but for both sides, warfare focuses more on outthinking and outmaneuvering your foe than destruction. In fact, most regard violence as hideously barbaric, and even the thought of harming another sentient being is beyond imagining.

Then they come to Earth . . .

A Call to Arms
When one of its scout ships lands on Earth, the Weave quickly realizes that humanity's almost innate ability to wreak havoc and death may hold the key to turning the tide in their fight. Unfortunately for all, the Amplitur have the same idea—and mankind is caught in the middle.

The False Mirror
When the Amplitur unleash an elite cadre of fighters, it soon becomes clear that they have subjected their human prisoners to horrific genetic manipulation. But if the Weave attempts to undo the effects, they may change the former warriors into something far, far worse.

The Spoils of War
With mankind's help, the Weave is finally on the verge of victory against the Amplitur. Until an alien scholar uncovers a terrifying truth: Earthlings might not even be capable of being civilized—and a shadowy group of powerful humans is already poised to unleash war across the entire galaxy.

©1991, 1992, 1993 Alan Dean Foster (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Simply Enjoyable

Simply enjoyable. A neat insight on galactic views on the Human Race. These three books, I highly recommend.

Books 2 &3 are best

The narration was decent. Naramore's buttery-smooth voice at times accentuates the smarmy, condescension of the author, making it much more annoying. But as you get out of the first book, the writing is somewhat less annoying and the narration becomes very comfortable.

Overall, the writing is light on the technical side and spends most time on politics & personalities. The science & technology is necessary to facilitate the story, but obviously not the focus.

The first book was often painful. The author blathered on for far too long proving his superior vocabulary and descriptive powers about things that did nothing to advance the story. On the contrary, it dragged on. The protagonist was irritating and insufferably arrogant. Lots of necessary groundwork was laid, but could've been done with half the words without suffering. Almost seemed like he had a word count quota he was trying to meet???

Books 2 & 3 proved far more enjoyable. They still had chapters that could have been vastly improved by a lot of aggressive removal of text. The pace picked up and the action apparently reduced the author's dependence on filler. The characters were always lacking in a bit of dimension, despite the author's verbosity. Still, books 2 & 3 had a variety of settings and themes, culminating in a most intriguing ending.

If you have a long time to listen to some sci-fi "space opera", it's a good deal for 1 credit. Honestly, just skip the first book.

Good trilogy

The book was ok but I felt like there was something missing. The last half of the book could have been longer I would have liked to find out what happens next, I guess setup for a sequal.

A good series I was happy to find on audio book.

I really hate when the aliens are bigger and meaner than us. I truly think many SyFi authors suffer from small winki syndrome. Finally in this book, mankind is the meanest and overall strongest versatile creatures in the universe. The theory that as a space faring society would be peaceful and would not make war is included in these books but who do you call when you need to go to war.

Starts slow and then picks up speed.

Starts slow. I rarely do not finish once I start. I’m glad I soldiered through. There are unexpected plot twists that were not telegraphed but remained true to the narrative. My kudos to the author’s intellectual honesty😊

Refreshing approach to the first contact genre.

enjoyable story

enjoyable story and narration. I was familiar with the narrator but had not known the writer ahead of time. will look for more stories to listen to by both!

excess vocabulary

foster got a new thesaurus for this set. it gets obnoxious. ok story though a bit tired

Guilty deathworlders

Humans are Deathworlders is a great trope, but this series infantilizes all other sapients to a degree that constantly seems absurd, all to illustrate a dubious moral message.

Revisiting after 30 years…

The narrator is excellent, and that was a pleasant surprise.

I read this series as it was being published when I was a kid. It stuck in my memory as an enjoyable read, so I figured I’d give the audible version a try.

There was one flaw that I remembered and I wanted to review it now that I’m older.

I will say that I still cannot stand the main character. I feel nothing but contempt for him. Part of that is possibly poor writing…but I’m also aware that there are actually people in the real world who behave in this manner.

So, I can’t just toss that character away as poor writing.

That said, it makes the book less enjoyable to get through. It’s like being forced to spend your leisure time with a democrat who has shotgunned the Kool-aid. He can’t back up his beliefs with logic or reason. He seems to justify them with emotion and he refuses to change his mind, no matter the evidence that is presented. It makes me wonder if the main character was originally written to be a woman and the publisher requested the author switch the sex to male.

You will find yourself hoping he is killed off. Eventually, you’ll want to increase speed to get through his portions.

Other than that, the overall story and other characters are still enjoyable.

best narrator on audible

Mikael Narramore is hands down the best narrator on Audible. Any fiction(scifi/ fantasy/etc) book he touches becomes a solid gold audiobook.