#nick seafort

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.

When Nick Seafort set out on his third interstellar assignment, I assumed that this time everything would go smoothly for him. Also, by "smoothly" I mean "as badly as it possibly could and then a little worse." Well, not to spoil the details, but Prisoner keeps very much to the spirit of Midshipman and Challenger.

In my head, I pronounce his name "Fine Touch." I have no idea whether I am right and I have no plans to look it up. I borrowed this book from my landlord's and/or downstairs neighbors to pass some time until my inter-library loans come in. The basic premise is quite familiar: a low ranking officer becomes the captain of a spaceship as the result of a series of tragic accidents. From reading the back cover, I couldn't tell if I had read the series before. (I hadn't.)

The story follows a midshipman name Nick Seafort as he is dragged kicking and screaming up the chain of command and into the captain's chair. He narrates the story himself, explaining every step of the way how much of a useless idiot he is. (He might have daddy issues.) The admiralty really should have named Seafort's ship the Murphy instead of the Hibernia, because Murphy's law seems to govern every aspect of their journey. Anything that can go wrong goes wrong, and so do things that no one thought could go wrong in the first place. It's a great space adventure in the classical tradition, in spite of being released in the still totally recent 90s.

One aspect of the book that was a little off-putting was the idea that Earth would be ruled by a "democratic" theocracy under the Reunited Yahwehist Chruch. In a way, it was reminiscent of Heinlein's authoritarian period. (As opposed to his remarkably similar libertarian period.) In fact, Heinlein wrote a book (I can't remember the title, but if anyone knows I'd be grateful) in which some low ranking brand new officer wound up captaining a vessel after a series of terrible accidents.