Like much of Modesitt's science fiction, the characters and plot are fairly clunky mechanisms for presenting a society (or in this case, two societies) organized according to a particular set of social-political-economic values: which is okay, that's why I read his SF. These were interesting societies to read about.

I was intrigued that one of the societies called themselves Thomists. Alas, it was not the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas they referred to (which is what Thomism generally means in theology), but the famously doubting apostle. ( )

Haze is a standalone science fiction book by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. When I first started the book, it seemed like it was going to go in a direction that I would enjoy reading about. However, I ended up not caring for it much at all and was a bit bored by it. This is one of those occasions where I probably would have been better off abandoning it, but I’ve never been good at that and it’s not a terribly long book.

The story is set a few millennia in our future. Our existing governments are long gone and the ruling organization is the Federation. They’re in charge of everything, but there are a few rebel/splinter groups. Humanity has ventured into space and colonized other planets, but they haven’t discovered any aliens. The entire story is told from the third-person perspective of Roget, an agent for the Federation who gets sent on various missions, ranging from an undercover mission to investigate a murder on Earth to a mission to a mysterious planet to penetrate the haze surrounding it and make contact with the life forms on the planet, if any exist.

Roget was neither very interesting nor very likeable. He kind of bumbles along, reacting to things and doing what he’s told as best he can, all the while thinking Deep Thoughts and obsessing over the painting of a dog. I’m being a little melodramatic; there’s more to the story than that, but I personally didn’t get much out of it. There’s one point where Roget thinks something that I found quite offensive. This doesn’t really spoil anything about the plot, but I’ll put it in spoiler tags for those who don’t want any advance preconceptions. Roget finds out that a woman he’s been working with for a couple days is in a lesbian relationship, and he thinks to himself that this explains how the woman has been able to maintain a professional relationship with him. And I was like, “Excuse me?!” As a straight and single female who works in a field that’s still considered mostly male-dominated, I have no problem maintaining professional relationships with my male colleagues. Talk about arrogant. I don’t know, I don’t usually seem to get offended that easily at things I read in fiction books, but that one evoked some anger. I don’t think it was necessarily the author’s viewpoint so much as a method of reiterating what he’d already conveyed about the low status women have in Federation society, but it certainly didn’t do anything to make me like the main character more.

The story is very political, with lots of discussion of different ways to handle different political concerns. I often enjoy stories with political intrigue, but there wasn’t really any intrigue here and it wasn’t very nuanced. There were times when I was interested in the story and curious about what would happen next, but over-all this was an easy book for me to put down. I also felt like some things were a little too repetitive or over-explained. We flip between two timelines a few years apart, and I kept trying to guess what the major connection between them would be. Unless I missed something, there really wasn’t much of a connection aside from showing us the events and thought processes that led to Roget’s final actions.

There were glimmers of promise in the story, but it mostly fell flat with me. This was the first book I’ve read by the author, and I do plan to try some of his fantasy work eventually. ( )

I gave Modesitt a final chance with this book. He failed.

It is at least 1000-1500 years after the fall of the American Empire but at least 2-3 times per chapter the main character is reminded in one form or another how evil they were and how enlightened and wonderful this new society is.

First off, who even talks about empires thousands of years in the past?[except for historians and history buffs? Not the run of the mill people] The past is forgotten and the evils of a generation are glossed over by newer evils.

It was just another diatribe against capitalism wrapped in Modesitt's scifi universe. Only his Recluce stuff for me now. ( )

This is an oddly constructed novel with two different stories running in alternating chapters separated in time by about five years. Keir Roget, an agent of the Federation Security Agency is the main character in both.
The earlier story has Agent Roget investigating a ‘Saint’ (Mormon) terrorist cell. His cover story during this is as an energy monitor, ostensibly responsible for ensuring people are not wasting energy. In the course of his investigation, the terrorists infect him with some memories of a long dead senator from Utah, a former part of the United States, a political entity absorbed by the Federation a thousand years ago. The senator was popular at the time, but he seems otherwise unexceptional. Why the cult chose him for their attempt to ‘convert’ Roget is unclear, as are their long-term goals or even their beliefs.
This is also true of the Federation, which seems to have come about after a long period of Chinese economic hegemony. At times, the Federation seems benign and patient, concerned mainly about maintaining order, and at other times, it seems oppressive and even paranoid.
The second story follows Agent Roget as he is inserted onto a mysterious planet protected by high-tech shielding. It is populated by a ‘Thomists,’ a group that splintered from Earth about two thousand years ago, although there is some suggestion of non-linear time hanky-panky going on. Roget is supposed to assess the threat these people pose and report back.
He discovers an unashamedly elitist society even more obsessed with energy efficiency than the Federation, and which has some odd societal practices regarding politics, commerce, production, and the like. None of these are well explained or, quite frankly, seem to make much sense, but in daily life the place is pleasant enough. This may be because they are ideologically and culturally less diverse than Earth and so are subject to less social strife. Their advanced technology helps, too.
One discontinuity that did strike me, however, was that in this technologically advanced society, many people seem to hold menial service jobs. I would think that a society that could develop underground trains that travel three times the speed of sound or teleport ships into low orbit could develop artificial intelligence systems to handle baggage or wait tables.
I believe this book is supposed to be a cautionary tale about energy overuse, national arrogance, and possibly a few other things, but it doesn’t quite pull it off. The political and philosophical dichotomies are poorly presented. There is no clear cause and effect established between decisions, actions, and eventual results. Ignoring the possible thematic element for the moment, the story itself is not especially interesting and the characters are lackluster.
Although I’ve enjoyed many of Modesitt’s other novels, I cannot honestly recommend this particular book.
( )

I really expected better from Modesitt.

It started off promising with the landing on an alien (albeit human) world. Unfortunately it rapidly deteriorated -- no reason he shouldn't have asked the 'questions ' that came to Riget's mind; a very forgettable travelogue of Haze (Dubiety); Roget's previous assignment should have been the first part of the book rather than running parallel; the Tanner/Roget sequence was just stupid and the ending was just SO SAPPY it was just as stupid. ( )