David Feintuch
MIDSHIPMAN'S HOPE
David Feintuch
Warner Aspect 1994
Pb 391 pages
ISBN#
0-446-60096-2
I lost a night's sleep reading this book--just
couldn't put it down! Though the first seventy pages are a little
slow, once this story starts moving it doesn't stop. Author
Feintuch is a master of characterization and suspense. Since
MIDSHIPMAN'S HOPE is written in first person, the audience is soon
drawn into a plausible futuristic story that touches on the very
essence of what it is to be human.
Think you've had a bad day at work? Midshipman
Nick Seafort has a long string of bad days and they keep getting
worse. Two hundred years into our future, the United Nation's Navy
charts courses through deep space to mining camps and colonies. So
far we humans have found no other sentient life forms. With a
stable government, the only enemy right now is the other midshipman
who bully's you and the lieutenant who will cane your backside when
necessary (and sometimes when not necessary). It is a scientific
fact that societies ebb and flow between rigidity and anarchy. So
it is not a far reach of the imagination that the shipboard
etiquette of the Napoleonic era could reestablish itself in the vast
expanses of a space-faring era. This being the case, promotion to
captain is thorough line officers only. The ship's doctor and
engineer are positions outside the chain of command because of their
intrinsic value. Thus it is, when all but one of the senior
officers dies in an accident, a lieutenant steps in to captain the
ship. And when he dies from a serious medical condition, the senior
midshipman is, by law, the next in command. Have you ever heard the
old idea that the best way to teach someone how to swim is by
throwing that person into deep water? Sink or swim--you learn fast
or perish. Young Nick is thrust into captaincy while "out at sea"
so to speak. Hundreds of lives depend on his decisions and he makes
a lot of mistakes--or believes he does. The problems thrown at him
are of the "damned if you do and damned if you don't" variety.
Mutiny lurks ever in the background. Death and guilt soon follow.
This sharp-edged challenge gets deadlier as the
UNS Hibernia continues her trek through deep space. Things
are not at all well in the ports they encounter. Nick's problems
multiply through the internal pressures of leadership, the deadly
malfunction of the ship's main computer, and the eternal
complications of a space that is no longer safe for humans. There's
something else out there, something never before encountered,
something hideously dangerous.
I won't give any specifics here because the
quality of the book is in the reading of it, and I don't want to
spoil your fun. This story is intense--an award winner, highly
recommended for space saga enthusiasts.
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