Seafort Saga

Midshipman’s Hope is the first book in David Feintuch’s Seafort Saga, and I absolutely loved it. It’s a very different style of book from most of the military SciFi I read, and yet in some ways it made a lot of sense to me. I gave it 5 out of 5, and I’d tell you to start here and see for yourself. The series runs to seven books, starting with this one released in 1994, followed by Challenger’s Hope and Prisoner’s Hope in 1995, Fisherman’s Hope in 1996, and then Voices of Hope, Patriarch’s Hope and Children of Hope. I’m writing up each of them, and I read the early ones most closely, so the later posts are a bit hazier on detail.

The setup is simple and it hooks you quickly. Nicholas Seafort is a seventeen year old midshipman, assigned to the UNS Hibernia for a long voyage out to the colonies, and nobody expects him to be anything more than the lowest officer aboard. Then things go wrong, and the person at the bottom of the ladder ends up at the top. It’s a story about responsibility landing on someone who never asked for it, told in the first person by Nick himself, and that voice is a big part of why it works. If you want to pick it up, it’s available as an ebook from the publisher, Open Road Media.

What happens (spoilers ahead)

Nick joins the Hibernia on a long voyage to the colonies of Hope Nation and Detour, and early on he has a run in with a fellow midshipman, Vax Holser, over who answers to whom. Then a rescue mission goes wrong, and the captain and two of the senior lieutenants are killed. Lieutenant Malstrom takes over, but he’s dying of cancer, and when he dies without ever promoting Holser, there’s nobody senior enough left. By the regulations, Nick is in command, and some of the officers don’t like it one bit. He’s seventeen, he’s terrified and he’s the captain of a starship.

The rest of the book is him learning what that means. He makes a hard decision to hang two crewmen who’ve been condemned for drug related crimes, and it damages his friendship with Amanda Frowel, a young woman aboard. He finds the ship’s computer, Darla, has been corrupted and would have sent them off course, and at Miningcamp mutineers try to take the ship, which he holds. When they reach Hope Nation, an epidemic has killed the admiral and Nick finds himself in charge of all the naval forces. Then he investigates a derelict ship, the Telstar, and meets an amoeba-like alien that killed its crew. He gets away and carries the warning home, so by the end the alien threat is real, and Nick’s leadership has been tested in just about every way a book can test it.

It’s worth saying something about the world Nick lives in, because it’s a big part of what makes the book feel different. The United Nations is the world government, and it’s tied closely to a church, the Reunified Christian Church, so treason and blasphemy are close to the same thing. The navy behaves a lot like the British navy between Trafalgar and the late Victorian reforms, traditional, a bit corrupt and full of people who got their posts through family. I hadn’t read a future quite like it, and it gives Nick’s rigid sense of duty something to push against.

The book is also built on a handful of very sharp scenes. The loss of the captain and the lieutenants happens fast, and then the ship has to keep going, with Nick standing in the middle of people who are older than he is and a lot more experienced. A boy of seventeen is told that he’s in charge, and the book doesn’t let him pretend otherwise. I remember reading it and being struck by how little room there was for him to make a mistake. When he does make one, it costs somebody.

What works and what doesn’t

It’s a book that divides people, and I think that’s fair. I’ll admit it’s derivative, with plenty of Hornblower in it and a touch of Heinlein’s Starman Jones, and a few of the coincidences are ludicrous. The prose is rough in places too. But the first person narration and Nick’s guilt and rigid honor carry you along anyway, the concept is excellent and the plot is tight, with reversals that are well set up. The book isn’t afraid to kill off sympathetic characters, and Nick is so tormented by his own failures that he can’t see how much his officers respect him.

Not everyone will be as warm, and I can see why. Nick can come across as a prig, more abrasive, more religious and more self tormenting than Hornblower ever was, and the constant guilt can get tiresome. He hangs minor offenders where Hornblower would have spared them, and that’s the scene that’s hardest to read. The female characters aren’t handled well, and there’s a lot of spanking in the navy’s discipline. Those are fair criticisms, and I don’t think they’re wrong. They just didn’t stop me enjoying it.

What I made of it

For me the book worked because of Nick. He’s got honor and he’s honest, and he holds himself to a standard most people drop the moment it costs them something. I loved that about him from the first chapters. He doesn’t want the command, he doesn’t think he’s ready, and he never pretends otherwise, but once it’s his, he does what he thinks is right, even when it’s the hard road. He isn’t an easy hero to be around, and he isn’t meant to be, but I believed him, and that mattered more to me than liking him.

It also made sense to me in a way I didn’t expect. A ship that’s months from anywhere can’t run by committee, so somebody has to be in charge, and the book takes that seriously. The navy is an old fashioned one, with ranks, regulations and a captain who’s master of everything aboard, and faith runs through all of it. David Drake, on the cover of one edition, called it an excellent job of transferring Hornblower to interstellar space, and I’d say that’s about right. If you like your military SciFi with huge fleet battles, you’ll find less of that here, and more of what command feels like from the inside. If you’ve read my take on Battle Cruiser, you’ll know I rate this series above it, and if you want another young person handed too much responsibility, Starship Troopers is the classic place to go.

A couple of other things stuck with me. The first is how the book handles loneliness. A ship that’s months from anywhere is a small world, and the captain’s cabin is the loneliest room on it. Nick is separated from the other officers by rank, from the crew by age and from everyone by the fact that he’s the one who has to decide. I thought that made his struggles feel real, because it’s less about the dramatic moments and more about the long, quiet stretches where he has to carry it alone.

The second is how the book plays with faith. Nick is a believer, and it shapes how he sees duty, sin and punishment, and the book never tells you whether he’s right. He prays, he feels guilt and he treats an oath as something you can break only at the cost of your soul. I’m not a particularly religious reader, but I found it fascinating to watch a character whose belief drives every decision. It gives the story a moral weight that most military SciFi doesn’t try for, and it’s a big part of why this one stayed with me.

Should you start here?

Yes, and I’d say that even with the criticisms. It’s the best of the seven for me, the one I gave a 5, and it works as a story on its own. It’s fast, it’s tense without relying on big battles, and a boy who goes from the bottom to the top in a few chapters is a hook that’s hard to put down. The discipline is harsh and some of the scenes are hard to read, so go in knowing that. If you can live with it, I think you’ll understand why I loved it.

I’d also say it sets the tone for everything that comes after. The rest of the series keeps asking what happens to a man who can’t compromise and can’t forgive himself, and this is where those questions start. If you finish it and want more, the next book puts Nick in his first real command, and I’ll get to that in the next post. I highly recommend it, and I loved the honor and honesty of Nick from start to finish.