With Challenger's Hope, David Feintuch's space-navy series centered on mythic hero Nicholas Seafort takes a definite turn for the worse. I've marked it "recommended," but narrowly, and only because it provides background for future novels in the series (this is the second). If you are not new to the concept of military SF or a rabid Seafort fan, you are likely to find it a difficult slog.
Feintuch deliberately gives himself a claustrophobic setting--Seafort is marooned in space with a skeleton crew, unhappy and frightened passengers, and little or nothing to do--and comes up short. Seafort can only Do His Duty, becoming a fair-to-middling tyrant in the process, and hope that somehow everything will work out. At 407 pages, Challenger's Hope is one of the shorter entrants in this series of lengthy books, but it's still about 150 pages too long.
The setting is the war against the "fish," an alien race of super-smart giant amoebas who can cook up deadly viruses, travel in interstellar space without ships, burn through the stoutest bulkheads (and spacesuits, ewww) with acid, and more. Fortunately, they have difficulty coping with point-blank laser cannon fire, or humanity would be blob-meat.
Seafort is fresh from his maiden voyage (Midshipman's Hope), in which he was jumped all the way from midshipman to captain and performed heroically, bringing a decimated ship safely home and discovering the existence of the fish in the process. Now the youngest commanding officer in the fleet, he runs afoul of an ogre of an Admiral, arrogant, overbearing, paranoid, and cowardly--really, not a very nice guy:
"Where have you been hiding, Seafort?"
I tried not to let my resentment show. "I've been on station, sir, at the last rendezvous. We lost one day--"
"Dawdling at the rendezvous to avoid the danger zone!"
"--after my wife died. I was ill."
"Died? From virus?"
"No, sir." I groped for a decent answer. "From decompression."
"Well, I'm sorry. But it can't be helped. You had no business skulking back there, Seafort; you should have been here at the rendezvous."
The fish strike with overpowering force. The Admiral, waay out of his depth, exchanges his damaged vessel--which no longer has a functioning star drive--for Seafort's and runs for home.
Seafort is actually sort of in his element in a ship stranded in deep space decades from Earth. Moody, depressed, and guilt-ridden, he slides into the role of hag-ridden Ahab of this voyage with ease. His tendency to lash out at others, then wallow melodramatically in regret--only slightly annoying in Midshipman's Hope--here comes into full and aggravating bloom:
When Philip settled in for his watch I went to my cabin, sat in my easy chair, one arm on the polished conference table, and tried to think of nothing. Disturbing thoughts intruded. I explored dying, and realized to my surprise that I was frightened. Not of dying, as the immediate prospect had faded, but of seventy-six years imprisonment on this disabled ship, surrounded by well deserved resentment, hostility, and contempt.
I'd made enemies with careless abandon and saw no way to extricate myself. I'd humiliated Gregor, made a nightmare of Chris Dakko's life, terrorized the Chief. I'd even been abusive to old Mrs. Reeves. Philip was the only one who stood by me, and that only from a sense of duty.
I sat miserable and alone until the dinner hour. Then I straightened my jacket and went to my duty.
One can take only so much of this sort of stuff.
Feintuch's writing is readable, and he strings together enough mutinies, fish attacks, and other assorted disasters to keep the plot moving. But Challenger's Hope is just too much of an unrelieved downer to be very enjoyable.
Writing: 6
Characterization: 7
Big Issues/Ideas: 7
Recommended reading: If the "Seafort saga," as the hypesters have dubbed this series, is to your taste, you will certainly appreciate David Weber's Honor Harrington books (On Basilisk Station, The Honor of the Queen*, and others, which follow the career of the Royal Manticoran (space) Navy's finest commander. And of course, there's much more of Seafort to come (Prisoner's Hope, Fisherman's Hope*, etc.). I prefer the more complex protagonist and perspectives of Jerry Pournelle's "Janissaries" books (Janissaries, Janissaries: Clan and Crown) myself.
*I've also reviewed The Honor of the Queen and Fisherman's Hope for Epinions.com. Review locations:
The Honor of the Queen
http://www.epinions.com/book-review-1116-BB4AAB0-37F4100C-bd4
Fisherman's Hope
http://www.epinions.com/content_33770344068
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