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


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.


From Library Journal
As U.N. Secretary General, career navy officer Nicholas Seafort supports the Earthwide planetary colonization movement until an act of terrorism alerts him to unfulfilled duties on the world of his birth. The latest addition to Feintuchs popular Seafort Saga (e.g., Voices of Hope, Warner, 1996) revolves around the struggles of an honest man to maintain his personal integrity while learning the wisdom of necessary change. Topnotch sf political intrigue with a strong military flavor, this fast-paced tale should appeal to a wide readership. For most sf collections.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
From the author of The Still (1997), an addition to an established military SF series, the Seafort Saga (Voices of Hope, 1996, etc.) narrated by UN Secretary General Nick Seafort. In 2241, colonies flourish throughout the solar system and other stars, from which Earth, recovering from a war with aliens and threatened by environmental collapse must import food. Seafort's beloved Navy insists on commissioning huge expensive new spaceships, but when he inspects one he's appalled to find unwonted and unegalitarian luxury. Politically, he struggles to keep the world government on his side, while the Church Patriarchs threaten to excommunicate him if he doesn't agree to their venal agenda. Still, he rejects a prestigious award for moral leadership, becomes reconciled with his estranged ecological-activist son Philip, and licks his young aides into shape. But then, crippled in a bombing attack by the terrorist Eco Action League, and forced by Philip to acknowledge the parlous state of the planet, he brings forward legislation to begin reversing the damage. Furious, Seafort's enemies combine against him, despite his overwhelming popularity. Following a mutiny aboard the huge and powerful starship Galactic, Captain Stanger threatens to laser Earth into submission unless the rebels' demands are met. Seafort, undergoing experimental medical treatment on the Moon, avoids immediate death or arrest, and decides to attempt to capture Galactic and end the mutiny with only his ex-Navy wife and a handful of old friends and young cadets to help. Lots of emotional nurturingit helps disguise the brutal floggings still prevalent in this man's Navypoliticking, and religion, but limited action: okay for the teenaged target audience, of little interest otherwise. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

U.N. SecGen Nicholas Seafort is the most powerfull man on Earth. And although his battles are of words and politics - the colonies vs. the Church Patriarchs; his beloved Navy's funding vs. the despised Enviro lobby - Seafort remains a strict, uncompromising, driven man who keeps his own counsel and walks alone. Until the night a terrorist bomb rips his life apart... Even as the Senate and the Navy demand that Seafort declare martial law, Seafort's son, Philip, confronts his father with the results of his stubborn course. Seafort has fought to protect humanity by diverting resources to ever larger, more heavily armed starships - while global ecological collapse has turned Earth into a horror of barren, ravaged countryside and toxic swamps. But even as Seafort turns his attention to this growing calamity, he's faced with a coup d'etat - an orbital assault on Earth that threatens the future of all mankind. Now, unarmed, with only civilians and children at his side, Nicholas Seafort is going to war to save Earth from the enemies within.

FROM THE CRITICS

C. A. Mobley

Feintuch fans, rejoice! The tormented Nicholas Seafort, now UN secretary general, is back in all his glory. In Patriarch's Hope , he faces the toughest challenge of his life -- saving humanity from itself. Feintuch won the John W. Campbell Award for his first book in the Seafort Saga, and this book is even better. Duty, honor, and courage in the face of agonizing, world-destroying choices, along with stunningly realistic battle scenes -- if you haven't discovered Feintuch, you're missing the hottest SF writer since Robert Heinlein and the most compelling and absorbing SF hero ever.

Feintuch paints a bleak picture of the year 2241. A unified Earth is ruled spiritually by state-sponsored religion and temporally by the United Nations, as are the colonies scattered across the stars. Earth itself is an apocalyptic disaster collapsing under its own sewage. Large areas of the planet are completely uninhabitable, vegetation shriveled under toxins in the air and water, land barren and desolate. Almost all of Earth's food and resources come from the thriving colonies.

The Enviro party wants to restore Earth, but they're in a minority. The Navy and the other military forces have a better idea -- build a class of massive interstellar warships capable of reining in the colonies chafing under Earth's rule. The first of these, the Galactic, carries over 3,000 colonists. The Galactic-class ships are intended not only to transport colonists and goods between the stars, but they're also rippling with massive armament and weapons.

Enter Nicholas Seafort, Navy officer forced into politics by circumstances. As UN SecGen, he faces interference from the Church and dissension within his beloved Navy. Seafort's own son, Philip, is a member of the Enviro party and staunchly opposed to his father's politics. When an explosion paralyzes the elder Seafort from the waist down, Philip finally has a chance to show his father the bleak, uninhabitable landscape that was once the ancestral home in Wales. The SecGen sees his duty. Earth must be reclaimed, no matter who opposes him. He proposes the legislation that will begin the healing, then leaves Earth for critical low G surgery to knit his shattered spinal cord.

Betrayal. His beloved Navy mutinies and attacks Earth itself in an effort to force Seafort to abandon his environmental policies. The SecGen has no choice. He must risk his newly regained mobility -- and his small band of supporters -- to take possession of the Galactic and put the Navy back in its place. Battling his way corridor by corridor, Seafort and his people reclaim the vessel and the future of humanity's birthplace.

One of the most compelling features of any Feintuch story is the relationship between Nicholas Seafort and the young sailors who follow him, and Patriarch's Hope is no exception. Seafort agonizes over the danger he forces his people to face and never realizes that it is his hope, his spirit, that leads them to live lives that are worthwhile. The threads of honor, duty, and self-sacrifice that run through the plot are stunning examinations of the choices that our world faces today. Patriarch's Hope is SF at its finest. -- C. A. Mobley

Locus

...[Y]et another angst-ridden military SF adventure....There's plenty of exciting action...

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 paralyzed--and 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.

Library Journal

As U.N. Secretary General, career navy officer Nicholas Seafort supports the Earthwide planetary colonization movement until an act of terrorism alerts him to unfulfilled duties on the world of his birth. The latest addition to Feintuchs popular Seafort Saga (e.g., Voices of Hope, Warner, 1996) revolves around the struggles of an honest man to maintain his personal integrity while learning the wisdom of necessary change. Topnotch sf political intrigue with a strong military flavor, this fast-paced tale should appeal to a wide readership. For most sf collections.

Locus