Prisoner's Hope

Seafort Saga #3

by David Feintuch

Assigned to Hope Nation while recovering from injuries, Captain Nicholas Seafort is appointed liaison to the wealthy planters whose holdings are vital to the Earth-Hope Nation relationship. But he's soon a pawn in a dangerous game when the planters, who fear that Earth has abandoned them to an alien attack, rebel, declaring their independence.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Military Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy

506 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1995

About the author

David Feintuch (1944–2006) was the author of the award-winning military science fiction Seafort Saga series, which spans Midshipman’s Hope, Challenger’s Hope, Prisoner’s Hope, Fisherman’s Hope, Voices of Hope, Patriarch’s Hope, and Children of Hope. Feintuch came to writing late, previously having worked as a lawyer and antiques dealer. In 1996, at the age of fifty, he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer from the World Science Fiction Society. He later expanded into the fantasy genre with his Rodrigo of Caledon series, including The Still and The King.

Reviews

[Charles van Buren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Seafort continues as a most unpleasant person

By Charles van Buren on July 31, 2018

Format: Kindle Edition

Reading this series is the mental equivalent of bathing in a cess pool. I may be wet but I'm not clean. Nick Seafort continues to be a most appalling commanding officer whose mental and emotional problems continue to the point of boredom. I noticed that some other reviewers have likened him to Captain Bligh; called him a whiny, grumpy, twit; immature; and abusive. And let us not forget, selfish, self-serving, self-righteous, self-pitying, sadistic prig. He is all of that. He is also a prime candidate for a friendly fire "accident". Most of his success has been from luck not ability. All in all Nick Seafort is nasty piece of work.

I purchased the first three volumes as a discounted set. Foolishly, I looked at only the positive reviews. I should have also read the minority opinions in the negative reviews. Had I done so, I would never have purchased the books. After this experience I now read the minority reviews of a book to see if they have a common theme.

[Sue Law · Rating 1 out of 5]

By half way through I was just hoping the fishes would win soon and bring the agony to an end. I don't remember the first two books being this bad, but in this one the protagonist is a selfish, self-serving, self-righteous, self-pitying, sadistic prig!

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jos jedna brza knjiga skoro non stop akcije i desavanja koje me drze na ivici sedista. Strasne stvari se nastavjaju dogadjati glavnom liku i iskreno taj deo mi postaje malo previse kao i njegovo kanstantno samo omalozavanje. Cinjenioca da je spasioc covecanstva a on i dalje sebe vidi kao propalu dusu koga svi mrze itd. posle tri knjige pocinje da smeta.

Sem toga nema druge zalbe tako slobodno navalite.

[Andreas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had run out of books during a holiday in the Greek islands and had to scurry to a second hand bookstore before I lost my sanity. I had seen the “Hope” books in bookstores before, and hoped (ahem) that the books would be more or less good copies of the Honor Harrington series by David Weber.

I gave up after a hundred and fifty pages or so. The main character is a total bastard, who takes offense at the smallest slight. The author seems to think that military command entails being a despotic father figure. There may have been a story. And don’t get me started on all the religious stuff. Steer clear of this one and go buy the Honor books instead.

http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=695

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the third in the series. I've read the first two and (unfortunately) I have already purchased the remaining four volumes. This was a quick read and the plot line kept the story moving right along, using a four-part sequence: 1. Invent an emergency, 2. Kill somebody off during the emergency, 3.Nick Seafort ingeniously solves the problem, 4. Nick then snivels and whines, while mistreating all those around him. The sequence is repeated several times before the book ends. For a "hero" figure, Nick is a completely unlikeable fellow with zero relationship or leadership skills. Since I have already paid for the rest of the books in the series, I will likely eventually read them, but I will not be rushing to do so. My advice: don't get hooked on this series, or you will likely end up detesting Captain Nick Seafort as much as I do!

[Teufel Wolf · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incredibly tedious. The protagonist should have been tossed out the airlock long ago.

[Damaged142 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't even know what to say anymore, Seafort is one of the worst characters I've ever had the displeasure of reading about.

Maybe if his character had any actual development, instead of seemingly resetting after every book, I'd feel differently. But as it stands, we go through the same loop every book, and nothing changes. It's tedious.

[Gini · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was planning to put the Seafort Saga books down for a while and read some of the many books here on my shelves, but I found myself thinking about the characters and pulled back into his world.

In this book, Seafort relieves the cowardly admiral who abandoned him and his passengers to their fate. Once the admiral is no longer in service, Seafort follows through with his duel challenge and is wounded almost mortally in the resultant fight. Grounded, he is given liaison duty with the planters of Hope Nation. But the alien fish return and throw the situation into chaos again.

I find the books compelling, but Seafort's Gilbertian sense of duty is wearing without the sardonic humor. His self-loathing and -abasement are just as grating. I kind of want to slap him upside the head. There are characters in the book that attempt that, to no avail. Yet as irritating and exhausting as I find him, I also find that I can't seem to put the book down for very long. Without a doubt, this is old-fashioned, militaristic scifi filled with wooden characters and histrionics. But it keeps dragging me back in.

[Ed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading the books in this series is akin to a guilty pleasure. In some ways they are Young Adult level stories but for the sex and violence. There were times I considered reading the last couple chapters and putting the book aside but I also didn't want to miss some crucial point.

Six-word review: Seafort a winning whiner, ultimate loser.

What's good:
1. The plot
2. The action scenes
3. The description of Planet Hope and its people

What's not so good
1. The characters seem unreal and stereotypical
2. The rules under which the Naval Officers operate remind me of the 18th century British Navy. I can't imagine that would be the case in the 23rd century.
3. The constant whining of major protagonist Seafort about how he's a terrible person just got on my nerves.
4. Too many coincidences.

Therefore I give it a 2 rating, maybe 2 and a half. Can't really recommend it unless you really like Space Operas.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it is refreshing and unusual to find a lead written with such an unflagging moral compass who doesn't come across as a cartoon, it is also painful to read the self-inflicted torture he endures because of that same rigidity. Painful, but necessary, especially in these troubled times. Following someone who endures beyond comprehension or comparison even when he believes himself to be already irredeemably damned because of his instilled values of duty and honor begs us to ask the question inspired by those such as Joshua Chamberlain and Rodger Young - -Where do we find such men?

[Rhode PVD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun but the whole self-tortured with guilt plus battling through despite extended physical illness gets exhausting. He's always upset with himself and always about to keel over with injuries. This is not the book to read if you are tired already.

[Rob Markley · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's already turned to custard but you hope that somewhere at the end of the novel will be redeeming mercy and, or justification for the harsh path... nope!

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 2 out of 5]

This volume suffers from being mostly shore-based. And guilt-ridden.

[Lucas Richard-Carvajal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cw: SA as a plot point

[Adele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I don't like reading about Seafort on a planet as well as Seafort in space. More than half this installment is kind of dull and I don't like reading about pathetic amnesiac Alexi or angry silent-treatment Vax either. However, once Seafort does get into space and other things happen ( I love arrogant, capable, smart station AI William and I love how they bait and destroy so many fish, and I love how Vax saves Nick in spite of himself, and I even like that William found a way to reproduce, though killing Rosetta to do it is rather off-putting ) the final third of the book is really excellent for me.

[Anna]

I read these back in college or thereabouts. There was a sale on the first 3, so I reread those. About like I remembered, super-angsty milSF. Very readable, though at times I just want to throw Nicholas into therapy and give him a cat.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

A miserable protagonist in a miserable dystopian setting. This was marketed as "Hornblower in space," but it's not. Authors like Forester and O'Brian deal with the harsh discipline of the late 18th/early 19th Century British Navy because it's part of the historical setting, but they don't revel in it. They deliberately make their protagonists less severe outliers so that they only have to deal with the unpleasantness when it becomes useful to drive the plot.

Feintuch revels in the harsh discipline, making it one of the main focuses of his series, when he could have just as easily left it out since he's writing science fiction, not historical fiction.

I kept reading because I kept hoping it would turn into "Hornblower in space," but it did not.

[Lara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another installment of Nicholas Seafort and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Several Months. I want to read rousing space opera, not pages and pages of Nick's self-loathing and constant reaffirmations of his own unworthiness. Also, Lord God, can nothing good happen to him? He just can't catch a break, and it's getting depressing to read.

Okay, I'm reading Book 4 just to see if they figure out how to defeat the aliens, but if it's as painful to read as a lot of this one was, I'm done with Feintuch.

[Daniel Magill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was decent in parts, but mostly underwhelming.
It is very dialogue-heavy, and also first-person. But for a first-person book, there is surprisingly little time devoted to the protagonist's inner thoughts and feelings. He is not very self-reflective. He just says things and does things, and is emotionally immature but barely seems aware of it. Again, very dialogue-heavy.

And this would be fine if the story were more compelling, but even halfway into the book, it just wasn't. Pretty small-scale stuff, with a far-off distant war that eventually does come much closer. The protagonist is mostly just a whiner, who seems overly fixated on everyone following proper procedure even though he and others frequently don't. But then he is easily enraged when others don't properly address him. This pettiness seems to get far more attention than it needs because it never has much of a bearing on the actual plot.

There is also a religious subculture to the entire civilization but this never really becomes anything or pays off in a significant way. It's there. And that's about it.

The best aspect of the book for me was when one of his few close friends suffers a head injury and loses his memory. This dynamic was very interesting and altered their relational dynamic, because while the protagonist had many memories with regard to his friend and wanted to interact with him on that level, the friend remembered almost nothing. I enjoyed this aspect of the book more than anything else, and it kept me interested to see how it would play out.

The world-building was relatively shallow, and the descriptions of battle relatively scant. But, I was intrigued enough to at least finish it and see how it ended. The ending, though, was also nothing special.

I didn't realize this was Book 3 in a series when I bought it because it doesn't say that anywhere on the cover (major fail for the cover designer!) and I bought it in a book store, not online. But I was able to eventually figure out what was going on once the story kicked in. But I don't plan to read any of the others.

[Gregory Faccone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhere between everything going wrong in both his personal and professional life, protagonist Seafort manages to mature even while riding the edge of physical and mental breakdown. If that does not sound like a typical hero, you are correct, but this series does not attempt to be typical. In the long run it is to its benefit. You still won't resent troubled Seafort despite his ability to make the right decision even if at the time he sees it as morally wrong.

His most successful decisions are in his professional role as an officer in the equally troubled UN space navy. His decisions in his personal life on the other hand seem like a series of train-wrecks. It all comes together in a book three that raises the scale of the ongoing conflicts set in the previous entries. Perhaps the series needed this sort of change-up, not really being a shipboard adventure but rather the less fun politicking and herding cats of a rebellious colony world.

This entry is not my favorite in the series, but it was still a part of the journey to be taken. Like Feintuch, in my own series I understand the need to keep it fresh and different while still striking similar chords which the reader hopes for and expects. This entry sets up the overall series arc to go in almost any direction the author chooses to take it—a good fork in the road. It also keeps open the wide field of expectations from the reader. If you are to this point in the series, this entry will likely keep you going to the next.

This series is not designed to be a high literature, but rather an introspective fun time, and on that it succeeds.

[Bea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tretí diel pokračuje v duchu prvých dvoch, ale na rozdiel od nich nie je situovaná na loď. Prevažná časť deja sa odohráva v kolónii "Naděje národů", ktorá bola cieľom Nicholasovej prvej cesty. V porovnaní s prvou a druhou knihou sa akčná časť dostala trochu do pozadia a viac priestoru dostáva psyché hlavnej postavy. Svojím spôsobom to nie je "klasická" military scifi, skôr dráma (? - nie som si istá kam presne spadá) zasadená do vojenského sf prostredia. Čitateľ je viac zatiahnutý do interakcií postáv, do vnútorného a dosť rozporuplného rozpoloženia HP, ktorý až úzkostlivo dodržiava zákony, rôzne vojenské predpisy, ale aj prikázania dané jeho vierou. Čo z neho robí chvíľami až fanatika. Musím však uznať, že postava je tak dobre napísaná, že neviem povedať to je blbosť, to by sa len veľmi ťažko mohlo stať, alebo iným spôsobom posunúť postavu do vymyslených charakterov. Naopak, viem si takú osobnosť dosť živo predstaviť. Len mi nie je sypmatická.
Samozrejme, stále tu máme prvky, ktoré tvoria základ sf žánru. Hrozbou sú "ryby" - ako nazval Nicholas mimozemštanov, no nie sú ústrednou zápletkou, kniha nerieši ich prieskum, kontakty s nimi sú len na obrannom základe a len dotvárajú aktuálnu situáciu a vyhrocujú stav. Či sa oplatilo prečítať? Ale áno, do istej miery to bolo zaujímavé.

[Mark Zodda · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been awhile since I first read the initial two books in the Seafort Saga and I had forgotten how much I detested Feintuch's main character, Nick Seafort. A horrible example of an officer with almost nothing positive in his favor, it is easy to forget that it is Feintuch's skill as a writer that enables him to bring to life such a complex character as Nick Seafort and make him both odious and compelling. A religious bigot with no self-control and no understanding of how to lead and command because of circumstances that put him in charge too soon, Nick Seafort is a caricature of what a commander should be with all of the wrong impulses in control. That said, the series as a whole and this book in particular is a quick-read that moves along like a slow-motion train wreck that you can't look away from or ignore. It is so compelling that even though I can't stand Seafort and want to look away so badly, I will pick up the next book in the series and see how else Seafort destroys the lives of those around him. This series should be required reading for those middies and cadets that come from our academies with no governors on and little understanding of how to really lead.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this installment of the series first. It was at times repetitive, frustrating, engaging and interesting. Like many others have noted here, Captain Seafort’s character flaws are numerous, which can make him unlikeable. But the plot moves quickly and is interesting. I didn’t know the backstory because this was the first book of the series I had read, but it was easy to figure out what was going on. All in all a decent read. The ending though, felt like a cheap cop out to set up the next installment.

[Scott Wozniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story expands the world and makes some huge changes. I liked the plot, but am a bit disappointed that the main character didn't grow much at all. Unlike the first two books, he seemed to regress in this one. It was moving emotionally, just hard to watch him go through it. (I happen to know from reading these years ago that the next book is has a breakthrough experience so I'm looking forward to seeing that at last.)

[One · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first part I liked, especially the alien bits, even the political overlap and the military aspects. The second part (the voyage) was grim, and I hated the tolls of religious upbringing. Then again I don’t understand why so many bad things must have happened to an character, at the moment there is no arc. Again, the anger management course isn’t invented. This post apocalyptic world is inflexible and infuriating.

[Boulder Boulderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the first couple of books, I thought Seafort was an unpleasant character who would grow into a Hornblower/ Bolitho-esque hero of the seas (in this case space). I think actually though that this deeply unpleasant, cowardly, rageful, vindictive man is actually thought of as a heroic figure by the author.

I cannot recommend this series.

[James]

Assigned to Hope Nation while recovering from injuries, Captain Nicholas Seafort is appointed liaison to the wealthy planters whose holdings are vital to the Earth-Hope Nation relationship. But he's soon a pawn in a dangerous game when the planters, who fear that Earth has abandoned them to an alien attack, rebel, declaring their independence.

[Clint the Cool Guy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding book. I remember not liking this one as much before because so much of it doesn’t take place on a ship. But it has a lot of action, and does a lot of good world-building. It’s enjoyable, an excellent read. Recommended!

[Lucas Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never enjoyed a series so much where I actually truly LOATHED the main character. He is so "emo" and "self righteous". Yet I fly though these stories amd keep turning the pages. So for writng a book I keep reading fast with a character I hate, I give it a decent rating

[Marti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great series!