Book 5 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen
Rating: 4 out of 5
The world where the Malazan Empire exists is a vast world and includes continents where the Malazan name has never been heard. Here in this fifth novel of the epic Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson takes us to those other places and displays more of his breath-taking and vivid imagination through world-building and myth-making. Erikson takes epic fantasy to the limits and beyond.
By doing so, Midnight Tides, seemingly represents a break from the continuity of the previous four novels. It is a different place, the story seems to have occurred in an earlier time period than that of its predecessors, and only one persona is familiar to the readers – an earlier, younger version of a Tiste Edur character named Trull Sengar, who only had a relatively small role in the fourth novel. Midnight Tides is the story of two empires, a kingdom based on total control of the resources of the continent – the Letherii Empire; and the newly-formed conglomeration of tribes previously warring against each other – the Tiste Edur (a group of people also fleetingly glimpsed in the preceding books). Lether, who has succeeded in campaigns of subjugating its neighbors in order to control their natural resources has only one great obstacle left before the total domination of the continent, the tribes of the Tiste Edur. However, the Edur have finally realized the only way stop the coming inevitable onslaught is to stop their in-fighting and unite against the larger enemy.
The tale unfolds mainly through the stories surrounding two families. The Sengars of the Tiste Edur – the warrior brothers Fear, Trull, and Rhulad, who become pivotal in the realization of the formalization of the Tiste Edur empire through their trials and most of all, disappointments; and the Beddicts of Lether, brothers also – Hull, who plans to betray Lether to the enemy; Tehol – making his way through Lether society as a seemingly-failed businessman, and Brys – the Emperor’s Champion. However, as it turns out in the other novels, the unfolding war is just a part in the bigger conflict among the gods who seem to manipulate the destiny of mortals. And it is through these immortals that Erikson reveals the background behind the history and myths of the peoples of this world, and connects the fifth novel to the vast unfolding story of the Malazan Empire.
Midnight Tides also is a novel where Erikson presents a society that is so overtly familiar to the contemporary world. He presents a society eerily and uncomfortably familiar to some readers, more particularly American society and the various mother nations of Britain and Western Europe that contributed to its culture and people. In explaining Letherii society, he presents the forces that molded today’s Western-driven culture. He presents a people relying not only in a monetary system, but on a systematic system of managing debts and credits; a society believing in the supposedly inherent greatness of its culture and its “manifest destiny” to impose that culture throughout their world; he presents a government that aims to protect the “interests” of its society by assuring that other cultures become subordinated and taken advantage of; a military that increasingly relies on impersonal destructive weaponry, taking away what little was left of humanity in what was already the most inhumane acts of society. Erikson gives a scathing rebuke of today’s ultra-competitive society bred in today’s media:
…You take your natural vices and call them virtues. Of which greed is the most despicable. That and betrayal of commonality. After all, whoever decided that competition is always and without exception a healthy attribute? Why that particular path to self-esteem? Your heel on the hand of the one below. This is worth something? Let me tell you, it’s worth nothing. Nothing lasting. Every monument that exists beyond the moment – no matter which king, emperor or warrior lays claim to it – is actually a testament to the common, to co-operation, to the plural rather than the singular.
Steven Erikson, by the way, is an archeologist by profession before he became a writer and has studied past cultures and histories. He probably knows what he is talking about. This background in archeology also shows in his writing in this novel and all the rest. His places are dotted with ruins here and there and helps define the culture of one of the people of his books and help tell their history. His writing has also shown a vast improvement from the first novel, and considering the story of Midnight Tides is, in the surface, just barely connected to the past four books, it’s almost seems like this is the way Erikson would like to start a series had he had the chance. His writing becomes crisper and clearer. And humor (albeit dark and sarcastic) has now become fully integrated.
On the other hand, some of the chinks in his writing still remain. Particularly the problem of giving ample time to develop a vast number of characters – nine hundred pages of fine print still isn’t enough. He still leaves explanation to things and events up in the air leaving this for further novels, or for the reader to research back.
Fortunately enough, Erikson’s story is so entertaining and so engrossing that the reader just moves on and enjoy the remarkable tale conjured from the creative imagination of a great writer and discovers a world so vast and dynamic, it rivals and probably surpasses any other fantasy world created before it. And the journey is only halfway over, which is great news for fantasy fans.
This review ends with Erikson's astute observation of man's progress through history:
We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.
