Seafort Saga

""There is no pity in the endless night, no mercy in infinite space. We do not belong there. Not now, not ever--unless one man summons the unbreakable will and unyielding discipline to survive the dark, silent hell he lives to challenge...""

- Midshipman's Hope

Queen Victoria's Navy updated with new equipment and put into a Space Opera. Not literally. That is just the feeling of the premise of this series of SF novels by David Feintuch, which can be a lot of reading fun, if that is what you are looking for. For a similar feeling see: the Honor Harrington series by David Weber.

The Seafort Saga follows the career of Nicholas Seafort, eager midshipman starting out from one of his early voyages where a disaster wipes out the top end of the command structure leaving the inexperienced youth in charge. The verse's background includes a strong world government backed by an equally strong church, many of the heroes issues arise out of his strictly religious upbringing and how this conflict with the realities of life in the Space Navy and indeed the world. Seafort's first voyage also leads to the discovery of Starfish Aliens who apparently don't like us very much.

The Seafort Saga novels, in order of release.
 * Midshipman's Hope (1994)
 * Challenger's Hope (1995)
 * Prisoner's Hope (1995)
 * Fisherman's Hope (1996)
 * Voices of Hope (1996)
 * Patriarch's Hope (1999)
 * Children of Hope (2001)
 * Galahad's Hope (not yet published)

This series provides examples of:
 * Author Existence Failure -- David Feintuch died before publishing Galahad's Hope. Hopefully someone in his family pushes the publication sometime soon, as it was supposed to be the final book in the series...and Children left a multitude of dangling plot threads.
 * Bad Dreams -- Nick constantly dreams about being left at the Naval Accademy by his father, the dream is identical to what actually happened.
 * Also, every man he's killed or had executed has shown up in his nightmares.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Edgar Tollliver.
 * Exact Words: Seafort talks a group of rebels out of an engine room with the promise that they wouldn't be shot. He has them hanged instead.
 * Faster-Than-Light Travel -- The Fusion Drive
 * First Girl Wins -- Thrice. The first girl we meet that is of the appropriate age,.
 * General Failure / Pointy Haired Military Boss -- Admiral Tremaine of Challenger's Hope. In the first scene of the book, he virtually accuses Seafort of faking the evidence of contact with the aliens and accuses his bridge crew of conspiracy, re-assigns him to a smaller ship with said bridge crew, gives orders to ensure that Seafort's ship is first to arrive and last to leave at every nav point, and not to open hostilities with the aliens whilst blasting the hell out of them before the Admiral's ship arrives.
 * It Got Worse -- Where to start? Every book turns the POV characters (and Nick, if convenient; see book 7) into punching bags.
 * Examples in order from book 1: Command staff dies, leaving the teenaged Seafort in charge. His ship is attacked by mutineers from a space station. He almost dies in an encounter with the "Goldfish Aliens". Books 2-4 and 6 keep going from there (5 and 7 have a different P.O.V. character).
 * Space Is an Ocean -- Almost literally. Interstellar travel takes years (months in later books), mail is carried by the ships, and there are no FTL communications.
 * Space Whale / Starfish Aliens -- Well, Goldfish Aliens, anyway.
 * Subspace Ansible -- Averted (see Space Is an Ocean note, above).
 * The Chains of Commanding
 * United Nations -- In Feintuch's 'verse, the UN is now the government of Earth and its colonies.
 * You Are in Command Now -- The basis of the entire series, with Nick Seafort being thrown into higher and higher levels of command throughout the first four books.