Children of Hope - Hardcover

Feintuch, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0441008046 ISBN 13: 9780441008049

Publisher: Ace Hardcover, 2001

Synopsis

In the continuing story of a man bound to his duty and tortured by the guilt for all that his duty demands of him, Captain Nicholas Seafort faces something much more ordinary than the alien wars, planetary rebellions, and ecological chaos he has survived, something that might finally cost him his life.

About this title

About the Author

David Feintuch is the award winning author of the bestselling Seafort Saga and the novel The Still. An inveterate traveler, he has been a photographer, an antiques dealer, and an attorney.

Reviews

Midshipman's Hope (1994), Feintuch's paperback original first novel, which helped win him the John W. Campbell award as best new SF writer, introduced Space Navy officer Nicholas Seafort, whose sense of moral inadequacy drove him to superhuman accomplishments that left him feeling even guiltier. After five books the series went into hardcover with Patriarch's Hope (1999), and the fascinating Seafort is at the center of this seventh novel, too. The narrator, however, is Randy Carr, a 14-year-old boy who first tries to kill Seafort but winds up as his adopted son. Randy is a mess. He's impulsive, overflows with teen angst and has a talent for seeing the truth and sharing it in the bluntest, most insulting manner possible. Like his adoptive father, he takes himself more seriously than anyone should. They aren't alone; everyone in this novel is obsessively driven. After a war that wiped out the alien, space-dwelling Fish, humans are struggling for control on the planet Hope. In particular, servants of the Church will do anything to rule in the name of God. Then the Fish reappear.... Amid the nonstop action, Feintuch skillfully pushes all the emotional buttons. Readers may feel like whacking Randy upside the head with a two-by-four, but they'll probably nod approvingly toward Nick Seafort. Fans of military SF will love the book, and Seafort addicts will be happy to know that there are plenty of loose ends to weave into Feintuch's next novel.

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The protagonist and viewpoint character of the seventh Nicholas Seafort yarn is Randy Carr, son of the late Derek Carr of UNS Galactic and virtually an archetypal boy-who-comes-of-age. At first, he is a vengeance-driven sociopath, who insults a bishop of the odiously theocratic Reunification Church and nearly kills Captain Seafort. Therafter, he passes through a "Perils of Pauline" sequence until long-suffering, infinitely patient Captain Seafort adopts him. Then he becomes Seafort's indispensable ally in fending off vengeful theocrats, who want Seafort executed for numerous heresies, and learning about the resurgent Fish, the deadly space-traveling aliens Seafort thought he had annihilated. But they are alive and amenable to a trade agreement--yet another heresy on Seafort's record. At novel's end, human and Fish allies are heading for Earth to present rapprochement to the UN and the church. Writing much more tightly than in several previous installments, Feintuch fleshes out Seafort's motives sufficiently plausibly and regains much of the reader appeal that the Seafort saga lost in the last few books. Roland Green
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Edition details

• Publisher: Ace Hardcover
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0441008046
• ISBN 13: 9780441008049
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 503