I Read Books: Midnight Tides

Midnight Tides

The Malazan Books Of The Fallen escapes the Malazan Empire entirely. On to Lether, a kingdom on the verge of becoming an empire, where everything revolves around debt and money. And to the north, their likely next conquest, the Tiste Edur. Barely a rumour in the previous four books, they have a thriving society which has been recently united by the Warlock King.

Various factions in Lether are jockeying for position for the loot of the Tiste Edur. But it’s not going to be as easy as they think. Not that the people in charge are doing the work, it’s the Indebted who join the army to escape their debts.

There are four brothers from a prominent family in the Tiste Edur domains, and the Warlcok King has a mission for them, one that will change everything. There are three brothers from Lether. One disillusioned after his reports on the northern tribes turned into conquest. One made a fortune, then lost it, causing the markets to crash, now living on a roof with a comic manservant and no money. One the king’s champion.

The magic and gods on this continent are stuck in an earlier mode, and there are, if not answers, at least new perspectives on questions raised in previous volumes. But visitors are on their shores, and more than that, The Chained God is active here too.

After four volumes of jumping back and forth between the Malazan frontier on Genabackis and Seven Cities, with occasional excursions elsewhere, we find ourselves in a new weird place, and new weird politics. The barbarian frontier versus the brutality of civilisation is back, in a new, re-mixed form, with economics front and centre, and farcical with it. There’s some awkward sex comedy that verges on horror when it intersects with the undead strand. No one in Lether is what they seem or doing what they claim they are it appears. There’s maybe a serial killer who’s murdered three thousand people, or perhaps that’s the number of Indebted smuggled out, and he’s just killed tens, it’s a bit confusing.

Read This: The series makes a turn into the unknown, approaching satire in the city, and straight-faced barbaric epic fantasy on the frontier
Don’t Read This: Having gone through two story lines in four volumes, the fifth is yet another prologue to the main story