From Amazon
If you're already a fan of David Feintuch's bestselling
Seafort Saga,
Patriarch's Hope will be a welcome chance to catch up with the series' hero, Nicholas Seafort, now Earth's global executive. In this installment, Secretary General (SecGen) Seafort must juggle the demands of a colonial empire across the stars, a powerfully politicized Navy, and a morally questionable world religious council against the needs of a dangerously degraded planet. Much of the book details Seafort's political maneuvering and the discarding of his anti-"Enviro" prejudices with the help of his idealistic son. But the action picks up before the book closes, as a crippled Seafort leads a small team to wrest a giant battleship from the hands of a mutinous captain unhappy with the SecGen's change of heart.
If you aren't already a fan of the "Seafort Saga," you may or may not be sold by Patriarch's Hope, depending on your tastes. The grizzled, conflicted Seafort huffs and puffs predictably throughout, and the pseudofuturistic, military motif is ever-present and a bit much at times (the "SecGen" and his "middies," use "puters," fly "helis," and find frequent cause to shout "Belay that!"). Hope is passable military SF, but it serves better as an adventure-filled primer on honor, stoicism, personal responsibility, and male bonding. --Paul Hughes
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
It's full speed ahead with all lasers blazing in this addition (after Voices of Hope) to Feintuch's popular space opera series. Nicholas Seafort, hero of the Transpop Rebellion, has risen to the post of SecGen of the United Nations on a badly polluted 23rd-century Earth dominated by a fundamentalist Christian Council of Patriarchs. Seafort, a devout Christian and a former military man, tries to strike a balance between an increasingly belligerent navy (backed by the Patriarchs) and an increasingly intransigent Enviro Lobby. The screws are further tightened on Seafort when he becomes the target of terrorist attacks supposedly conducted by Enviro radicals. Then the Patriarchs try to force him to support a naval buildup that will negate even the most modest environmental legislation. A bomb attack leaves Seafort partially paralyzedAand at this point the novel's action takes off with a vengeance. As always in the series, Seafort is a powerful, larger-than-life figure. If his heroics seem improbable, he is rendered somewhat human by his acute awareness of his moral failings. But he is also a relatively unpleasant hero, given to bullying, holier-than-thou pronouncements and prone to mete out physical punishment to young men who do not meet his high moral standards. This novel will appeal to Feintuch's many readers and to most aficionados of military space opera, but it is unlikely to attract fans of more sophisticated SF. (May) FYI: Feintuch won the 1996 John W. Campbell Award for best new science fiction writer.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
