Steam and Stories

Book Details

Title: Haze
Author: Katharine Kerr
Genre: Scifi & Fantasy / LGBT
Length: 290 Pages
Publication Date: Aug 26, 2025
Format Read: epub through Kindle
This book was provided free via NetGalley

Spoiler Free Review

My Review from NetGalley:

I had a lot to say, but I will try to keep it short and sweet here. This was the first book from this author I have read. So my experience may be different if you are a veteran reader of this author.

The story itself has good progression. It seems to have several leads that all come together at the end, but it also feels like something is missing. To me, it seems that this is just the first part of a series, if not, there are a lot of holes that need to be filled. The description was not wrong when it mentions heavily researched and space opera. The is what we got.

Now the problems that I had. The characters don’t seem to have great interpersonal relationships. They are supposed to be a team, but there isn’t a whole lot of bonding. This could be due to the fact that every other paragraph seems to be a perspective shift. They are often, they are abrupt, and it caused me to have to reread many sections to realize what was happening, and who we were following.

The MC, Dan, seemed to be pushed aside for others in the second half. I felt that Dan just ended up doing the same thing over and over. Riding the Haze. It didn’t leave much time to see him really grow, especially if he is supposed to develop romantic relationships…

My biggest issue was the LGBT tag. It is the main reason I read this book, but it seemed severely lacking. We got just enough to check the box, and left me wholly unsatisfied, especially at the end. Without going into spoilers, it is my belief that the book needs to decide if it wants to go hard into the LGBT category, or drop it all together. What I got, works as a Sci-fi novel. I don’t believe it works well in the LGBT genre.

One last thing I just want to touch on. I’m not sure if it was intentionally written this way, or if it is just the way it was converted to an .epub file. The formatting was hard to follow. Each new paragraph seemed to only be indented by a space or two, which at a glance, made each page just look like a wall of text. Coupled with the constant scene changes with no scene breaks, made reading difficult at times. I got used to it after a while, but just figured it should be mentioned.

Longer and More In Depth Review

Warning! This review will contain spoilers!

Since this is a review for an Advanced Reader Copy, and outside of my traditional MM Romance genre, the format of this review will be a bit different.

Haze is set thousands of years in the future, where ships travel through hyperspace lanes called “shunts”, the ships utilize pilots that meld with AI to navigate these lanes. The main character, Dan, is one of those pilots. Former Fleet (military) pilot, he is now homeless and battling drug (Haze) addiction. Some shit goes down to indicate that maybe these hyperspace lanes are in danger, and a SpecOps team is sent to investigate, and pick up Dan to help.

Basic jist of the story to start. What originally got my interested in this book, was the blurb, the book cover, and LGBT. Now, coming off of MM Romance Genre, I was searching for more stories that had MM romance, naturally. I figured, hey, being marked as LGBT, the MC being described as male, and the universe being accepting of bisexuality, this could be it. And being Scifi/Fantasy, another genre favorite of mine. This could be good.

Well…

First, I am going to cover the LGBT tag of this book. I can really only describe it as ‘checking the box’. It seemed that maybe this book wasn’t meant to have queer relationships, as when they did show up, it seemed to be more of an after thought, or more forced in there. [Dear reader of mine, in case you aren’t aware, I am a gay male, I love MM romance, so take that in consideration when reading the rest of this review].

We have a couple female side characters that are married, FF relationship. Doesn’t play a big part in it at all, mentioned maybe less than a handful of times. Okay, fine, whatever.

Main character, Dan. Well it starts by hinting that Dan sells his body to get money to buy drugs, or as it specifically called in this book as Haze. I have a lot to say about Dan, but I’ll get to that in a minute. It’s assumed that he just got finished hooking up with a guy and is getting high at the start. When his former crewmates or some people in the Fleet he knew before hand? I’m still not entirely sure. Well one is a man and apparently had a thing with. Devit is his name.

Here is where it gets tricky to follow along, Dan and Davit are supposed to be lovers, it is mentioned a few times throughout the book, they share the same cabin, they are supposed to be ‘in love’. HOWEVER, the book does a terrible job at showing any of that. The best I can describe Dan and Devits “relationship” in the book: Devit is the drug dealer and carer of Dan. There is virtually NO romantic actions between the two. I think once Devit holds Dan in bed? But other than that? Laughable. Devit even calls Dan, buddy for fucks sake. For two people supposed to be in love, they act more like friends than lovers.

Sometime in the beginning of the book, Dan hooks up with a woman while they are at a random station. Ok, well the blurb did say bisexual, sure okay. Devit later hooks up and really just falls in love with another woman fleet officer. They even kiss a few times. More than Dan and Devit ever do on page. I am fine with polyamory, but it just felt like the book, as far as romantic relationships go, was more towards Devit and this woman, Santreeza. To me, it felt like Dan was just thrown in there so the LGBT checkbox could be checked.

Oh boy get ready, what really ticked me off, at the end? Well Dan got a promotion and was transferring stations, and Dan and Devit basically said, ok darn. well, see ya! We can’t really keep doing an officer/enlisted relationship. EXCEPT, then Devit gets promoted to officer, one rank below Dan, but same rank as Santreeza, and the book ends with Devit like, hey Santreeza, wanna get married that way we can continue our relationship. BROTHER? What about Dan?

Dan is supposed to be the MC right? Well let’s take what he does. He’s high on haze 7/10ths of the book, and relegated to sleeping 18 hours a day. The rest of the time he is stuck in a meld piloting the ship, and a few times he gets to talk to some people. He really gets the shaft, especially the second half of the book. He is an important part of the overall story, but he just seems delegated to a side character.

I don’t want to assume intentions of the author, or what may or may not have been pushed by the publisher, or whatever. But Dan really just seemed like a last minute addition to fill a spot.

Well, how does one fix it? Well, the story isn’t totally lost here, this is just for the LGBT themes of it.

I have a few ideas, how I would fix it:
1. Get rid of the LGBT tag and just make it a regular Sci-fi Fantasy genre story. Dan and Devit are best friends, there already isn’t any romantic scenes between them so it won’t take much editing to show that they are just friends instead of them supposed to be lovers.
2. Add more romantic scenes between Dan and Devit. Little touches here and there, glances, sweet words of affection. KISSES. Devit can kiss Santreeza all day but not once Dan? Get rid of ‘buddy’ and have Devit give Dan another term of endearment. Doesn’t have to be ‘baby’, could be a totally made up word for in universe, in a different language even, that means love or something. Buddy is a dogs name or a friendly endearment. Not one to be used between lovers.

If the author really wants to keep the LGBT tag, and wants bisexuality and polyamory. Here we go, easy solution:
*Dan in the story is rank of Lieutenant. Gets promoted to Lieutenant-Commander. Either start Dan off at a lower rank, Ensign, to get promoted to Lieutenant at the end, or stay at Lieutenant and not get promoted.
*That way, when Devit gets promoted to Lieutenant they are the same rank. Santreeza stays same rank at Lieutenant (that is how, at the end, Devit and Santreeza can marry and cohabitate, cause, same rank).
*Santreeza starts off not caring about Dan, but then has a sexual attraction at the end that is never explored. Change it so she is at least a little bit attracted, that way their attraction can grow with Devit as well.
*The end of the book, all three of them are the same rank, all three can get married, and all three can cohabitate. There we go.

I’ve really harped on the LGBT side of this book. It really won’t be hard to change to embrace it, and even less to just drop it. What we got right now just doesn’t sit right with me.

Let’s move on shall we.

The story arc itself is great. It’s typical Sci-fi that we know and love. We got space ships, space battles, aliens, etc. I loved the use of AI and the ‘organic’ and AI interactions [Not to be confused with AI like ChatGPT. Think more, Computer from Star Trek AI]. The space flight with the pilot melding with the AI was interesting, I’m still not sure I fully understand exactly how it works, but hey, space magic.

If we take out my LGBT TED Talk from above, we have a great story. I get the feeling the book was written with sequels in mind, and in that sense I feel it didn’t quite end in a satisfying way to make it a great standalone. The ending felt rushed. This is going to be a dumbed down spoiler heavy section: They spent a majority of the book searching for an answer, only for the answer to pop up at the last minute like, yeah I did all they shit, and it was bad so I’m going to die now bye. I was unsatisfied with the ending. If there was a second book, I would want to jump right into it to get the rest of my answers. But at the time of this review, there isn’t and I feel like I’ve been punched in the face.

Let’s talk about the writing, or prose. Now, I don’t mean to offend. I have not read any of the authors other stuff. She has written a ton of books that seem to do well, so I’m sure it’s great. So I can not compare what I read, with her previous works. That said, I felt like I was reading more of a detailed outline than a fleshed out novel.

Wait, let me explain!

The story is entirely fast paced. Seemed like every other paragraph we were switching scenes. The story is mainly Third Person POV. However, there are some sentences that seemed to switch to First Person? But maybe sometimes they were just thoughts. I don’t know. But we would be over here, two characters talking, then abruptly we would be on the other side of the ship watching some other characters, then boom we were on a different planet with another character. Then back to the ship with someone else, and then back. There was no scene breaks or anything.

Once I got used to the style, I could follow along. It helped that the flow of the story arc with the story beats followed the same path, so we weren’t jumping all over the time spectrum here. Each scene was basically, this happened, then this happened, then this, etc.

There didn’t seem to be any time or room for characters to really develop. We switched so much I didn’t really get to feel connected to anyone. It didn’t help that about half way we basically switched Dan out as MC for Santreeza and Devit.

The interactions between characters felt very, stiff. Imagine how military unit would interact with each other in a professional manner. There wasn’t much time for friendship, so we didn’t really get to see much in the way of interpersonal relationships.

And that is why I think this story is too short. Each character has their own personalities, and are good on their own. I just don’t think we get to fully explore them, or have a family/’brotherhood’ sort of relationship that a close knit team like this would have.

Next, I am unsure how much of a fault this is with the writing, or just how it converted to an epub or whatever. But the paragraph spacing was weird. Each paragraph was only indented by like one or two spaces, instead of the traditional tab indentation. Some sentences when had a paragraph break in the middle of it. The epilogue even started abruptly right after a paragraph at the bottom of the page. Just some minor formatting issues I’m sure that can get touched up for a digital release.

Overall: 2 / 5

I sure had more to say than I originally thought when I started this review.

If you are a fan of Katharine Kerr’s work, and don’t mind the LGBT tag, and like sci-fi, you will enjoy this book.

If you are looking for good LGBT representation, this is not it.

Would I personally re-read this book on release? No. Not unless some changes were made (see below).

Will I read a sequel? Honestly…if it came out like, tomorrow, yes. Realistically, by the time a sequel comes around, I will be long away from this book, and probably forget all about it, so probably not.

What I would like to see

I see two paths here. If the author comes to me and says, “Hey Josh, I really liked the feedback you gave, how would you change it for you to love it?”

Well Katharine, I would say. First, you need to pick a lane. Either be LGBT and go all in. Or drop it.

If you drop the LGBT tag: Reword some things for Dan and Devit to just be friends, or really go into what Devit really is, Dan’s carer. Drop mentions of Dan loving Devit. It’s the easiest change, I think, to make to keep the story without changing much.

If you want to keep the LGBT tag and go all in, which I personally prefer because that is who I am so that is what I like to read: To keep the blurb mention about bisexuality and polyamory, I think it would be best for Dan, Devit, and Santreeza to all end up together. Give Dan less “drugged-out-of-his-mind and sleeping” time. Cut it in half even. Give him some more time to develop the relationship with Devit. Just be more romantic, get more vulnerable, etc. Don’t need explicit sex scenes. Also give Dan more time with Santreeza, getting to know, letting that attraction build, so it feels more naturally at the end when they all end up together.

Devit already does a great job at caring for and protecting Dan. Give him a new term of endearment for Dan, drop ‘buddy’. Let Devit care more emotionally for Dan. Devit and Santreeza storyline is already fine.

Santreeza needs to not be so cold initially with Dan. For a natural progression, I think when she first meets him, there should be a hint of attraction. They both work with ship AI, so let them get to know each other and bond more through working together with the AI.

Before the climax, when Devit and Santreeza spend the night, have it instead include Dan. Their relationships should culminate with all three sleeping together that night. And thinking about each other during that final battle.

OK PHEW, I am stopping there. I could keep going, but I already went way harder than I originally intended.

If you read this book, let me know what you thought! Do you agree with me? Do you think I’m batshit insane? This was only my opinion based on the expectations going into this book, and what I got.