I started reading The Good Captain today while trying to decide whether or not to list it (it’s a novella—only about 17000 words, and I wasn’t initially sure it fit our site).  Well, I ended up reading the whole thing.  That’s unusual.

The author describes The Good Captain as a science fiction retelling of Benito Cereno, by Herman Melville.  I haven’t read the original, but I must say I could almost feel the salt wind of the original in the fabric of the retelling.  I think the piece is remarkably good through the first two thirds.  The voice of the Captain is strong and engaging.  The sense of foreboding is intense, as the Captain steadfastly does not believe his own misgivings about the situation, and you—the reader—knows it is only because he lacks the imagination to guess at the reality.  That’s not to say I could tell for sure what was going on, but I certainly had my guesses, and I found myself urging him to figure it out—to see his doom before it descended.

While the Captain is in the middle of this situation—this situation he just can’t quite figure out—the story is gripping and compelling.  As I mentioned, I read the whole thing in one sitting, purely on the strength of that (large) part of the story.  But, eventually, the truth must out, and the story changes from being a psychological thriller to something else, and that something else (I won’t go into details), is told from an increasing distance, without the intensity or drive of the rest of the story.  To be honest, I finished reading this last act more because I was already so invested, not because the story continued to strongly hold my interest.  That latter part of the story is almost anticlimactic, and the story would definitely be better if that section was either longer (told as a novel) or shorter (stripped of most of its irrelevant detail).

All in all, though, I enjoyed The Good Captain.  The parts that were good were very good, and more than made up for the lacklustre ending.  And, at 17000 words for the whole thing, the slow parts don’t last all that long.  Definitely a solid pieces of writing, and I recommend it.

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