Midnight Tides – by Steven Erikson

Fifth book in the Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series

Rating (for the illiterate): * * * * * (5 out of 5)

Short Review (for the impatient):
Quite different from the other books in this series. More humour, more social commentary, but still epic, still brilliant, and still bloody hard work to read.

Long Review (for the curious or bored):
As stated previously, I actually do not give out 5 star ratings lightly. I have previously mentioned that there are probably only 20 –30 books out of all the books I have ever read that I could give this rating to. Well, there are now about 21-31 because this book is every bit as good as the others in Erikson’s remarkable series.

So what is this one about? Well, it seems to be about a lot less than the other books in the series. It takes place on a completely different continent from the other books and has only a handful of crossover characters. It is essentially about two groups of people, the human Letherii and the non-human Tiste Edur, and the conflict between them. As seems to be the case with all the other books in this series, most of the story is a huge build-up to a potential climactic military battle. Which sounds like it would be really boring, but somehow it isn’t.

All of Erikson’s books have some sort of subtle social or political commentary in them. In Midnight Tides, this commentary is far less subtle. Witness the following characteristics of the Letherii people:
- they are a former colony of a now non-existent empire from another continent
- their whole social structure is built around the quest for gold
- most people’s lives revolve around the amount of debt they owe
- their society overtakes and absorbs other cultures, usually to the detriment of that other culture
- their conquests are supported by military might which revolves around sorcerous weapons of mass destruction with the potential to change the way wars are waged
- the influence of the Letherii is generally viewed as negative, even though most of the individuals within that culture are not necessarily ‘bad’.
If Erikson is not talking about the United States of America here, then I’ve completely missed the point of what he is trying to say.

All of Erikson’s books have a few amusing characters to provide some level of comic relief. Midnight Tides has two of the funniest, in the form of the seemingly harmless businessman, Tehol Beddict and his long suffering manservant, Bugg. Their interchanges and they way they exasperate the people who have the misfortune to deal with them is often hilarious.

Although this book takes place on a different continent from the others, the sharp-eyed reader will note that much of the material recounted here provides more backdrop to the wider events taking place in the other books. I, however, am anything but a sharp-eyed reader, so I am sure that I missed most of the significant points, especially around some of the revelations at the end of the book. My general confusion with the Malazan books is not helped by the fact the gods and magic seem to work slightly differently on this continent (or at least the people here call everything by different names).

Overall, this book is still a really difficult book to read. However, it is well worth the effort as I still found it compelling and impossible to put down. I can’t wait for the next book to be released.

And here I thought after your comments in other threads that you werent overly fond of Midnight Tides. It comes strong in the latter part, really strong. Funny pattern though that each book is a real chore getting into but after you finished it you wonder if it perhaps wasnt the best yet.

Exactly, Joacquin. I couldn't have said it better.