#seafort saga

[fr4ndszk]

covers for the japanese translation of david feintuch's seafort saga

[soursavior]

Children of Hope by David Feintuch

Children of Hope is the final published book in the Seafort Saga. According to the internet, Feintuch completed an eighth book shortly before his death, but it has not been published. This book once again steps away from the perspective of Nicholas Ewing Seafort and instead we get the story from the view of 14 year old Hope Nation native Randolph "Randy" Carr. Randy is the youngest son of Nick's old friend Dereck Carr who you may remember from the extensive death toll last book. As such, he has a certain amount of negative feelings about our mopey star captain.

The story follows Randy's fall and redemption. In the process, Randy supplies the spark to a conflagration that the government of Hope Nation and the Reunified Church have been building together for decades. It might have been possible to cleanly deal with all of that trouble with a little bit of help from Olympia, Seafort's current command, the biggest ship in the U.N.N.S. fleet. Unfortunately, an emissary from The Fish, humanity's great enemy from books 1-4, chose exactly that time to try to make peace with the humans. Smooth move, fish.

Randy isn't as likable as teen Nick was, but in a lot of ways he's one of the most relatable characters written by Feintuch yet. As a 14 year old, his top priorities aren't honor and god, they're touching boobs and being taken seriously. He reacts a little strongly to things, but at least he reacts. Another serious positive about Randy Carr as the book's narrator is that he absolutely never uses the transpop dialect. It's also nice to be able to see Nick from the outside where he's this dude who makes important decisions quickly and effectively, but without all the hand wringing and self-hate afterwards.

The ending of the book, in traditional Seafort Saga form, wraps everything up except the reaction from Earth, which we would presumably get at the beginning of the next book. We can pretty much assume Seafort will win public opinion and force his new political views onto society, but we won't know for sure unless Galahad's Hope makes it out of book limbo.

I would recommend it to: anyone who's stuck with the Seafort Saga, fans of classic sci-fi, fish.

Book rating: B-

Cumulative series rating: C+

[fr4ndszk]

[fr4ndszk]

good for them tbh

[fr4ndszk]

no matter how insane i am about rodrigo of caledon i will never be able to properly defeat my father, who completely unprovoked found the house listing david feintuch had lived in before his passing and sent it to me in an email with no context

[fr4ndszk]

feintuch is so good because he takes the super common trope of "what if we relied on the computer and it betrayed us" but instead of it being because of evil ai gaining sentience it's because of a manmade error...

and the manmade error was because the programmers were too busy talking about boobs. rip the groundsider who had tits so good they killed 6 crew members and 8 passengers

[fr4ndszk]

seafort saga fandom doesn't exist so here are some things he says about rodrigo of caledon too for two other people here:

this one's mostly just him responding to another comment but i like that comment a lot so:

and he says this on the possibility of a third book, but he also says every book past book 4 of the seafort saga was going to be the last book at different points in this forum, so take it with a handful of salt:

[fr4ndszk]

okay the seafort saga may not have rodrigo and rustin levels of insane gay people. but it has this.

[soursavior]

Patriarch's Hope by David Feintuch

Nick Seafort is back, and this time he's not letting any other suckers do the talking. This is back to basics Seafort. He's in charge, terrible things happen completely outside his control, he blames himself while they get worse, then he saves humanity at the last possible second.

The first four Seafort books were mainly adventure stories about duty and integrity. Voices was about poverty and class disparity. Patriarch is all about the environment and how it's our responsibility to care for the Earth. In spite of the overwhelming message and Nick being an old man now, Patriarch managed to reclaim a lot of the feeling of space and adventure that was missing from Voices.

I would recommend this book to: someone who liked Midshipman's through Fisherman's, but was turned off by Voices.

Book rating: C+

Cumulative series rating: C+

[soursavior]

Voices of Hope by David Feintuch

Thanks to the ambitious epilogue at the end of Fisherman's Hope, Voices of Hope was pretty much forced to start two and a half decades after that book. Voices of Hope also takes the wild step of being written from the perspective of someone other than Nick Seafort; in fact, it's by several someones. 

One nice thing about Voices: Philip "P.T." Seafort is way more of a bad-ass than his dad. When dudes come at P.T., his first instinct is to drop them and he worries about it after he's done. With his bare hands, he takes on groups of larger dudes with knives and wins. (He's 12 years old.) 

One absolutely terrible thing about Voices: two of the five P.O.V. characters are transpops and Feintouch wrote their sections entirely in the "transpops dialect" also known as "lolspeak as viewed by an old dude in 1996 after being pushed through a meat grinder." (The dude or the lolspeak.) No grammar, limited vocabulary, and all of the words are actually phrases that have been mashed together into one word and/or shortened versions of words it makes no sense for them to have been using prior to the devolution of their language. Transpops were the least interesting and most irritating part of Challenger's Hope and Fisherman's Hope, so I really don't know why Feintouch moved away from interstellar threats to concentrate entirely on them. (Aside from the obvious allegory about how we treat the underclass in our society, etc. I'm not saying it's an unworthy topic, just an uninteresting one.)

Overall, it was a decent read. In some ways, it's reminiscent of Star Trek: Deep Space 9's two-parter "Past Tense." I would only recommend it to a serious genre fan and would definitely not use it to bring a new reader into sci-fi.

Book rating: decent

Cumulative series rating: pretty ok.

[soursavior]

Fisherman's Hope by David Feintuch

Nick Seafort is back for this fourth and final (except for the next two books) installment of the Seafort Saga. After once again saving all of humanity and hating himself for it, Nick has been put in charge of the naval academy. While there he has to be a role model for the cadets, manage a few unruly staff members, help his wife recover from brain problems, keep politicians from pulling his funding, and eventually save all of humanity from something.

Nick bumbles through situation after situation by being slow on the uptake, brutally honest, and lucky as hell. As with previous books, Nick Seafort's relationships all follow the same arc: 1. Nick says/does something horrible to someone. 2. Nick convinces himself that they will hate him forever. 3. That person loves and adores Nick Seafort forever. 4. The fish show up and wreck everyone's shit.

In spite of the similarities to previous books, it was a fun read. I'll probably eventually get around to the last two books eventually, even if the author claimed the series was over forever at the end of this book.

[soursavior]

Challenger's Hope by David Feintouch

Challenger's Hope is the second novel to follow the exploits of Nick Seafort. A few months have passed since the end of Midshipman's Hope and Nick Seafort is looking forward to his first intentional command aboard the Challenger. It's a smaller vessel than the Hibernia, but it's well armed and ready to defend Hope Colony. Unfortunately for Commander Seafrost, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune have made him a Job for the 22nd century. Like in Midshipman's Hope, any time it seems like things are as bad as they can possibly get, it's time to brace yourself for worse. I would rate Challenger's Hope as more or less equal to Midshipman's. It's a thoroughly worthwhile read for fans of the genre, but not a great place to win over new readers. Next time: I'll be back with Harry Dresden and Jim Butcher for Grave Peril.