Midnight Tides

Expanding even more the world of the series, The Malazan Book of the Fallen‘s fifth volume, Midnight Tides, is an epic about fanaticism, suffering, lack of compassion, and the intrinsic problems of the capitalist culture. Steven Erikson continues to create complex societies and tragic characters, cleverly mixing humor, drama, and action with social criticism in a narrative that is as intricate as it is engrossing.

The story of Midnight Tides takes place before the events of the first novel, Gardens of the Moon. The protagonist is Trull Sengar, a Tiste Edur who suddenly sees his tribe just one step away from war when he watches ships from the human city of Letheras hunting seals in a forbidden place. To gain an advantage against the military might of the Letherii, Trull is sent along with his three brothers, Fear, Rhulad, and Binadas, to the north: their goal is to acquire a mysterious artifact that their leader saw in a dream. Now, in Letheras, Tehol Beddict, a bankrupt man sleeping on his own roof, is hired by three women from tribes that were conquered by the Letherii to destroy the city’s economy. Meanwhile, his brother Brys is promoted to the post of King’s Champion and his other brother, Hull, travels to warn the Edur of the Letherii plans.

The book’s themes are constructed by the constant opposition between the culture of the Edur and that of the Letherii, criticizing the former’s tribalism and the latter’s imperialistic drive. While the Edur’s main problem relies on their relationship with religion – they’re basically a theocracy – the Letherii are obsessed with money. While the humans use money as a kind of armor in life, with wealth symbolizing power, which translates into walls, castles, and armies, the Edur use coins in a religious ritual to cover the body of their dead. In other words: if greed and materialism are the ruin of humans, religion ends up permanently distorting the Edur, as is evidenced by the result of the ritual in one of the main characters.

The Letherii society is built on the notion of debt. Exposing a capitalist society that is oppressive to its people and also conscious of its own destructive nature, Erikson presents a great, duly exaggerated satire of the modern world, in which political decisions are made to favor great companies instead of the people; in which the fortune of a few means the misery of many others; in which debts enslave the individuals of the lower classes until the end of their lives; and, ironically, in which the most precious good available, money, has a value of artificial nature, existing only while the people believe in its force – just like any other god.

Erikson uses Letheras to present various attacks on capitalism. In the city of Letheras, the cult surrounding money is an indirect one, with the attributes that facilitate its acquisition being put in the spotlight instead of money itself: hard work, diligence, ambition, and discipline are the things that are worshiped and desired. The narrative is clear about the allegorical nature of the city, inserting notions such as “manifest destiny” while discussing the illegitimacy of invading other places in defense of freedom when tyrannies are encouraged if it’s financially profitable to do so.

Various details of the worldbuilding work as fantastical representations of elements of our own society. The penalties imposed on criminals, for example, function as a metaphor for a justice system that finds it much more desirable for a person to be rich than innocent: the sentence in Letheras always comes in the form of gold coins to be paid and the unpaid amount is tied to the back of the criminal, who needs to swim to the bank of a river, while carrying the bag, to survive. There are even public bets on who will die or not in the river, as you can never miss an opportunity to profit from the misery of others.

The most important character in the city is Tehol Beddict, a man who has lost his fortune in a mysterious way after acquiring it even more mysteriously. Tehol is an eccentric and arrogant guy – a typical character who could be played by Benedict Cumberbatch or any leading actor in Doctor Who – who gains a new purpose in life when approached by members of the tribes assimilated by the Letherii. His mission becomes to break the stock market, which leads him to request the help of his even more eccentric servant, Bugg.

The dynamic between the two characters is hilarious, being built on the basis of witty dialogues that fulfill several functions: they advance the plot, develop the two characters, reveal their secrets, and then hide them again under a textual surface that is simply illogical. Humor comes from the fact that their madness is not only used as a hoax – in order to confuse the other characters and the reader, and encourage everyone to underestimate the two – but has also become an intrinsic element of their personality, which prevents them from acting in any other way.

However, it is not long before Tehol and Bugg find other equally insane characters and the readers realize that Letheras is being portrayed as a sanatorium. Emerging as a ruined empire that is crumbling from within, but tries to hide it with public displays of wealth, the city increasingly surprises the reader with the calamitous state on which its foundations actually lie.

The only character that appears minimally sane in Letheras is the young Brys, who is promoted to the king’s personal guard just before the start of the war against the Edur. Brys always appears dislocated in the city, with an honor that doesn’t seem to be sufficiently valued and a serious countenance that ends up sounding comic when juxtaposed to that of his interlocutors. His best friend, the old sorcerer Kuru Qan, for example, seems constantly on the verge of senility, although he has the highest military rank in the city. As is usual with Erikson, Kuru Qan’s manner of speaking is very particular, with the character always analyzing and concluding out aloud whether what was said to him is pertinent or not before answering the person he’s talking to.

On the Edur side, the reader is introduced to a society ironically similar to the Teblors’ of House of Chains: a theocracy that values ​​war and has very misguided notions about its gods, which lead them to commit terrible acts and face horrible consequences. The Edur are also just like the Letherii, deluded as to their own importance, believing themselves superior to all.

The protagonist of the book represents an element that usually opposes religions: he’s a skeptic. Trull is a sower of doubts, a person who needs to uncover the truth, even though his frequent questions put him in danger. Trull, however, is also a passive individual, always expecting others to act based on the questions he raised, especially his brother Fear. This is his great tragedy:  Trill knows what is wrong, knows that the path his people are treading will only lead them to pain and suffering, but rarely can he act on his own to change that outcome, limiting himself to point out the mistakes made by others. His initial antagonist is his younger brother, Rhulad, who, being always impatient and inconsequential, takes Trull’s reprimands as attacks instead of lessons. Rhulad is perhaps the character most filled with pathos in the novel, stirring up the readers’ pity with his naively arrogant posture. 

The connection between the Letherii and the Edur occurs with the characters of Hull Beddict and Seren Pedac. The first is a Letherii who feels betrayed by his own people and wishes to take revenge by betraying them himself and telling military secrets to the Edur. Seren Pedac, in turn, is a guide who takes human caravans to the Edur and never intrudes on political issues. The love between the two characters is seen as impossible by both and it is not difficult to understand the reason for that: they both connect the two cultures, but in the opposite way. While Hull’s mission is destructive, Seren’s work is peaceful and conciliatory. The character arcs of the two, therefore, end up reflecting their journeys.

Erikson brings a much more focused and consistent narrative in Midnight Tides than in House of Chains, increasing the tension between the two societies and the countless characters who populate the story without never straying too far from the narrative’s main themes. Besides that, Erikson has always constructed the action scenes correctly and here he maintains his consistency. The moment of retribution of the Edur for the theft of the seals, for example, seems to be taken from a horror film: only the cries of terror from the victims are heard, while the main characters can only feel the monster’s evil presence. The author understands that horror tends to be much more effective when it’s just suggested instead of blatantly displayed.

The author still works with innumerable metaphors and symbolism that enhance the thematic discussion in the narrative: the notion of certainty, for example, is opposed to the protagonist’s nature at the same time that it is linked to the empty throne that the Letherii praise, reinforcing the negative concept of the term in the story while tying together the tragedy of both Letherii and Edur. Using metaphors as clues to the true identity of a certain character related to the sea, Erikson brings in Midnight Tides a grandiose and well-tied narrative that keeps rewarding more attentive readers.

The author even plays with the name of the Sengar brothers: while Trull has a similar sound to the word “true” –  and the truth is what he seeks the most – and Fear indicates the element that moves that character’s actions, the way Rhulad sounds also has great narrative meaning. The only one whose name seems random is Binadas, but he is the least developed of the three brothers, being always distant from his siblings.

In addition to metaphors, Erikson also uses irony to construct the complex symbolism of some scenes. When an Edur cries out to his servant “We are not the same, slave! Do you understand I am not one of your Indebted. I am not a Letherii”, the next sentence, “Then he sagged in a rustle of coins” contradicts the Edur’s statement by comparing him with the situation of the Letherii criminals in the river. Meanwhile, the scene at the climax in which a single gold coin rolls on the floor is also charged with symbolic meaning.

Nevertheless, Erikson still errs now and then. The section that stands out the most in this respect is the one that introduces a group of important warriors. The scene is very irregular in tone, flirting with the camp: when a warrior jumps to save Seren Pedac, for example, he appears out of the dark, shouting something close to “Stop there, foul villain!” All he needed was a noble steed and to flutter his hair to complete the package. The fight scene that follows doesn’t fare better, with descriptions that make a superficial impact, rather than following the “surgical” pattern of the rest of the series battles, whose descriptions tended to focus on the bones and organs affected, much like in the Iliad. Finally, what occurs with Seren before the fight, although eventually developed, appears initially problematic in its symbolism.

Offering a fun, complex, and socially relevant story, Midnight Tides raises once again the level of the series written by Steven Erikson, being one of its best volumes.

December 19, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on March 20, 2017.