I review Challenger’s Hope, Book 2 of David Feintuch’s Seafort Saga, where Nick gets a squadron post, loses nearly everything and ends up fighting to get a crippled ship home. I recap the story (with spoiler warnings), say what works and what doesn’t and explain my 4 out of 5.
I enjoyed it a lot. The score is lower than Midshipman’s Hope only because the first book is such a hard act to follow.
Challenger’s Hope is the second book in the Seafort Saga, released in 1995, and I gave it 4 out of 5. I enjoyed it, and I want to be clear that the score is lower than Midshipman’s Hope because the first book is such a hard act to follow, and not because this one is a disappointment. Nick has moved up, and the book is darker, heavier and a lot more personal. If you loved the first book, you’ll want to read this one, and you’ll want to be ready for a bleaker mood.
It’s also the book where the series stops being a single adventure and starts being a saga. The questions Nick asks about himself here are the ones he carries through the rest of the books, so it matters more than it looks. I’ll tell you what happens, with a warning before the spoilers, and then I’ll talk about what works and what doesn’t. If you want to pick it up, it’s available as an ebook from the publisher, Open Road Media.
What happens (spoilers ahead)
Nick is assigned to the UNS Challenger, but Admiral Tremaine takes it as his flagship and gives Nick the smaller Portia instead. The squadron is headed for Hope Nation to destroy the aliens, nicknamed the Fish, along the way. Portia is carrying a group of street children, the transpops, bound for the colony of Detour, and Nick sees them as a threat at first. Then Fish boarders release a lethal virus, and many people on board die, including Nick’s infant son. His wife Amanda is overcome by grief and takes her own life, and Nick has a breakdown. It’s a terrible stretch to read, and the book doesn’t look away from it.
After he recovers, Nick is moved to the Challenger, which Tremaine has left crippled and adrift with the passengers and crew he didn’t want. Nick puts down a mutiny and starts preparing the ship for an eighty year voyage home, conscripting the passengers and scavenging wreckage to keep it going. The radiation from the damaged drive draws more aliens, and battles shrink the crew further. In the end, Nick rams an alien ship, which triggers a faster than light jump that carries the Challenger along with it. After sixty days lodged in the creature, it comes out in the solar system, and Nick reunites with his father on the Moon before being given command of the Hibernia to go back to Hope Nation.
A few details are worth pulling out, because they set up the rest of the series. The street children on the Portia are the transpops, kids from the lower levels of New York who’ve been shipped out to the colonies, and Nick’s first reaction to them is suspicion. That’s the kind of thing he gets wrong, and it comes back around in a big way when we get to the fifth book. The jump at the end of the book is also a clever bit of plotting, because the Fish carry the Challenger home inside the creature itself, and Nick spends two months in there. It’s a strange, claustrophobic image, and it’s one that stayed with me.
What works and what doesn’t
People read Nick differently here, and I think the split is mostly about him. I’ll admit there are stretches where he’s hard to like, because he’s young, his authority is unearned and his stiffness gets wearing. But this is also the crucible where his character is forged, and the rest of the series makes no sense without it. Nick forgives everyone except himself, and his terror of breaking an oath comes from a strict reading of his faith. I thought that was a fascinating way to build a character, and it fits what I saw.
The writing is stronger than in the first book and the story is a bit weaker, because the whole thing is a long setup for the unwinnable conflict between duty and honor that Nick has to face. The idea of an interstellar war against what amount to alien space goldfish is hard to take seriously, which is a fair laugh. I can see why some people say the first third drags and the mood is too bleak to keep going, and I can see why others call the rest brilliant. In shape it’s simple, with Nick saving another ship, and I’d say the truth about it sits in the middle, depending on how much heaviness you can take.
A lot of what makes the book interesting is Nick’s faith. He’s a man with scruples in the old religious sense, terrified of breaking an oath and being damned for it, and that comes straight from his father, who passed on a strict reading of their religion. He keeps trying to resign and his career keeps going up anyway, which you could read as providence at work. I hadn’t thought of it that way until I looked at it again, but it fits, because the more Nick tries to get out of it, the more the navy piles on him.
There’s also the matter of the aliens. The Fish are essentially space goldfish, and I’ll admit they aren’t the most convincing enemy in the genre, and they’re a bit perfunctory as villains. For me that didn’t matter much, because the book isn’t really about them. It’s about what the war does to the people fighting it, and the Fish are a pressure that keeps Nick from ever resting. If you need a clever alien enemy, you’ll find the human problems in this book a lot more interesting than the monsters.
What I made of it
I enjoyed it, and I’d call it a strong second step. The early part is slower, and I didn’t mind that, because it shows you what kind of captain Nick is before things go wrong. When they do, it matters more because you’ve spent time with the people involved. The book also gives the series its first real sense of scale, with a fleet, a war and a chain of command that can’t be trusted. I always felt like I was watching one man try to hold up under the weight of a lot of other people. If it’s a captain under pressure you like, Flagship: A Captain’s Crucible is a more technical take on a captain facing an unknown alien threat.
This is where I started to appreciate how honest the series is about what honor costs. In the first book Nick’s code gets tested by an emergency, and here it gets tested by people, with orders from above and a crew below. He’s got a duty to the chain of command and a duty to do what’s right, and they don’t always point the same way. He’s hard to like at times, stiff and quick to blame himself, but I never doubted his honesty. That’s what carried me through the heavy stretches, and it’s why I kept reading.
One more thing I liked is how the book handles the people under Nick’s command. A captain is only as good as the crew behind him, and the book keeps reminding you that his decisions land on real people. The passengers he conscripts, the officers who resent him and the ones who follow him anyway all feel like individuals, and a few of them stuck with me. When you’re stranded with a crew for a long stretch, the small human details start to carry as much weight as the big events. It’s the sort of thing that makes a ship feel like a place and not a prop.
I’d also point out how much the book trusts the reader with an unhappy ending to a stretch. Nick doesn’t get a clean victory, and the trip home is long and expensive. The return to Earth and the meeting with his father is quieter than I expected, and it gave me a chance to breathe after a lot of tension. It’s a good example of the series’ habit of balancing the grim and the human, and I liked it a lot.
Where it sits in the series
I gave it a 4 out of 5, and it’s one of the two I’d rate just below the first. It didn’t hit me the way Midshipman’s Hope did, partly because the novelty had worn off and partly because the tone is so much grimmer. The ending is tense and well done, though, and the situation Nick ends up in has no clever trick to get him out. That’s the kind of corner I like to see a hero in.
My advice is to read it right after the first book, since they work as a pair. If you were on the fence after book one, this is the one that tells you whether the saga is for you. For me it was, and I kept going. It’s a good book, a heavy one, and a worthy follow up to a very good start.
I’d add that this is a book where the supporting cast really matters. Nick spends most of it with people he doesn’t like and who don’t like him, and the way that plays out is some of the best character writing in the series. A mutiny, a ship full of passengers who didn’t sign up for a war and an officer who doubts him all give the book a crowded, tense feel. It’s not a book you read for the big battles, though they’re there. You read it for what it costs to keep a ship together when everything is going wrong.