9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Use your brain, and think!, August 24, 2009
This book is not filled with explosions and people running around shooting at each other. This is a book that was placed in front of its reader to provoke thought and discussion. It is allegorical in every way, following themes in our current reality and other Modesitt realities. Ultimately the underlying theme is that we as a civilization have forgotten what it is to question and to use the intelligence that has been gifted to us. If you enjoyed Parafaith War and Gravity Dreams, you will like this book. If you prefer the Recluse series, you may not. I happened to have enjoyed this book very much and appreciate the discussions it has led to with my friends and family. I think Modesitt went out on a limb writing this book, and I hope it will be followed by others that are out of the current assembly line literature modality that we have been fed recently.
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24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Greatly Disappointed, June 23, 2009
I love Modesitt's works and have read nearly every book he's written. So I was really eager to read Haze and extremely disappointed, even angry when I finished it. Haze did not live up to my expectations for Modesitt's strengths of character development, humor and world building.
1. Character- our Federation agent/assassin has no depth. I have to assume that the whole layout of the novel with it's dual/alternating time track is an attempt to show us how the agent's past led to his decision at the end but it's too simple. We learn Haze is honest/open while the Federation is deceptive/manipulative/blind to facts, etc; so is the ending really any surprise?
2. Humor - don't recall any. No "wuff"ing donkeys, no scenes that grab the heart (were the frequent dog image scenes an attempt to charm?)
3. World Building - we get glimpses of a corrupt Federation past and glimpses of Haze but few answers that can be explained to the agent/reader. Haze looks like the author's attempt to build a utopia, a perfect world of rational and economical behavior. But it never seems real to me.
My recommendation: skip this book unless you really love the politics and economics in Modesitt's past novels.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Subtle like Fog... Very Little Point for Most, May 11, 2010
This review is from: Haze (Mass Market Paperback)
I didn't feel like I fully understood the novel until I read the author's biography on the back cover and saw he lived currently in Utah. Then it all made sense -- the target audience is dissatisfied Mormons.
The novel itself follows Agent Keir Roget, a trouble shooting agent in a Chinese-dominated galactic empire with an unusual love of dachshunds.
The book has two tracks, and a really random group of short sequences involving a hero of Mormon descent. This man became Utah's Senator when gas hit $30 a gallon through 'war-hero' brinkmanship with Chinese naval patrols. The first thread is time-backwards flashback as Agent-Captain Roget investigates a community of 'Saints' (i.e. Mormons circa 2250) who are dissatisfied with their Sinese overlords and have killed a data agent who snooped on their quota-exceeding energy usage. The second thread is Agent-Major Roget's exploration of the planet Haze (called Dubiety by the natives).
Haze has a more advanced Utopian culture, and the total environmental impact and illegality of free speech generalizations distinguish it from previous Utopias this author has created. Still, the look at the society is superficial, and Agent Roget, despite having a wry humor, is always emotionally distant.
This novel holds little of interest to a sci-fi reader who isn't a Mormon or highly religious. Some of the speculation on the nature of empires is interesting, but a non-fiction analysis of the same would give a superior reading experience.
My recommendation is read
Gravity Dreams by this author instead. It gives the same type of insight into a future Utopian society, but from a more zen standpoint. Personally, I enjoyed it much more than Haze.
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