David Feintuch (1944–2006)

Brilliant - absolutely brilliant.

When I first read Midshipman's Hope it was nearly 30 years ago, and I was about the age of the the Ship's boy Ricky Fuentes - the Middies were are a few years older than I, and the main character was an unimaginably elderly 17 year old going on 18! Now in middle-age my life perspective is very different - but how has it affected my view of the book?

If anything, I like it more now than I did when I first read it all those years ago. Nicholas Seafort is thrust show more into command, responsibility, and manhood before he was ready - yet it's not a tale of a swashbuckling hero - it's introspective, he makes mistakes, he has regrets, the weight of decisions bear heavily upon him. It's a brutally honest portrayal, and the novel is all the better for it.

The world building is also top-notch - a believable dystopia, and one which seems almost prescient in some ways considering the direction of the world today.

tl;dr
19th century British Navy - in Space! show less

In Midshipman's Hope, David Feintuch gives us Hornblower in Space straight without a chaser. Published a year or two after David Weber’s first Honor Harrington novel, Feinttuch is not as interested in space battles as he is in the angst of leadership. When a chain of disasters kills the senior officers of the UNS Hibernia on its way to an airless mining colony, 17-year-old Midshipman Nicholas Seafort finds himself in command. He buys into the top-down leadership model fostered by the Navy, show more but he worries that his crew and passengers will not take him seriously in his new role. He blames himself for everything that goes wrong on the voyage and gives himself no credit for his growth as a commander. He suffers from an almost pathological self-hatred. The naval tradition comes directly from its 18th-century progenitor, complete with severe hazing of young midshipmen and the death penalty for rebellious crew. Feintuch never adequately explains why a starship needs a large, uneducated crew fit only for swabbing the decks. 3.5. show less

Seafort must suffer.

If you need a three-word summary of the novel - that's all you need to know. Decades ago, when I first read "Challenger's Hope" I was in middle school. I made it halfway through the book during the weekend, returned it to the school library in disgust on Monday, then after wrestling with not knowing how he extracts himself from his situation (and knowing that there were several other future Seafort novels sitting on the shelves) signed it back out on Friday!

Seafort's show more sufferings and tribulations hit so much harder now than they did as a child, yet if anyone feels the way I once did upon first reading, I would encourage them to persevere. It's a commendable work of fiction - it doesn't quite rise to the heights of its predecessor, but when you finish you'll be eager to discover what awaits Seafort in his next adventure. show less

It's best not to go into the book thinking of it as a continuation of the Seafort Saga, but more of a stand-alone novel set in the same universe. While it is true that it advances the story of Nicholas Seafort, for the majority of the story he is almost entirely in the background, making only minor appearances. Instead of being from his viewpoint, we are treated instead to five different perspectives - those of Phillip (his son), Jared (son of his aide), Rob (assemblyman, son of Senator show more Boland), Pook (a New York tribesman), and of course Pedro Chang ("Neut" trader).

In a previous review I mentioned how it felt as if Feintuch was experimenting - and it is felt even more strongly in "Voices of Hope." The impression I get is that Feintuch wanted to write different characters, but he or his publisher knew that what his readers wanted was more Seafort, and this novel arose as a compromise between the two positions. While I appreciate having the different perspectives, I miss Seafort's inner monologue, and his viewpoint, as opposed to inferring it through the eyes of others. Two of the viewpoints, Pook & Chang's, (likely close to 40% of the book) are almost entirely in New York Tribesman dialect. As a writer it was no doubt a challenge, and as a reader even moreso - at times I struggled between wanting to continue the story and putting the book down because I had no desire to read another sentence in that dialect!

Of the three remaining viewpoints, Philip's was the one I enjoyed the most - he is like his father in some ways, though is very much his own person. Rob's was disappointing in the sense that I was continually disappointed in the character's choice, hoping he would be the person he wished to be rather than the person he was. That leave's Jared - a character I developed an immediate dislike for.

The novel starts off slower than I would like, and I can understand why some readers made the decision not to persevere and finish the book. Despite my above misgivings, the final act has all the hallmarks of the best of Feintuch's writing from his previous works in the series.

The one aspect which did not age particularly well was when it came to the portrayal of computers. In the previous novels we have sometimes complex portrayals of artificial intelligence (e.g. Danny & William), programming languages (NAVDOS), and those who work with computers (Dosmen). This worldbuilding is largely set aside, to engage with futurist trends which were all the rage in the 90s: the internet & hacking. It all feels very awkward: e-friends, email, "nets", hacking lingo taken from downhill skiing (seriously). It all feels very dated, and would have been well-meaning but out of touch at the time of its writing. Likely another writing experiment by Feintuch, but one which I don't personally feel was very successful.

It's a flawed work, but it does proved alternative perspectives on Nicholas Seafort which while interesting, mostly serve to highly how much more strength and depth his character has compared to any of the other viewpoints in the novel. show less