Midnight Tides

Midnight Tides
Series	Malazan Book of the Fallen
Publisher	Bantam (UK & Canada) Tor Books (USA)
Released	1 March 2004
Pages	940 pp (UK paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-553-81314-5 (UK paperback edition)
Preceded by	House of Chains
Followed by	The Bonehunters

Midnight Tides is the fifth book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. It was first published in the UK and Canada in March 2004 and in the US in April 2007.

Publisher's summary

After decades of internecine warfare, the tribes of the Tiste Edur have at last united under the Warlock King of the Hiroth. There is peace - but it has been exacted at a terrible price: a pact made with a hidden power whose motives are at best suspect, at worst deadly.

To the south, the expansionist kingdom of Lether, eager to fulfil its long-prophesied renaissance as an Empire reborn, has enslaved all its less-civilised neighbours with rapacious hunger. All, that is, save one - the Tiste Edur. And it must be only a matter of time before they too fall - either beneath the suffocating weight of gold, or by slaughter at the edge of a sword. Or so Destiny has decreed.

Yet, as the two sides gather for a pivotal treaty neither truly wants, ancient forces are awakening. For the impending struggle between these two peoples is but a pale reflection of a far more profound, primal battle - a confrontation with the still-raw wound of an old betrayal and the craving for vengeance at its seething heart...

Front matter

Dedication

To Christopher Porozny

Acknowledgements

Deepest appreciation to the old crew, Rick, Chris and Mark, for the advanced comments on this novel. And to Courtney, Cam and David Keck for their friendship. Thanks as always to Clare and Bowen, to Simon Taylor and his compatriots at Transworld; to Steve Donaldson, Ross and Perry; Peter and Nicky Crowther, Patrick Walsh and Howard Morhaim. And to the staff of Tony's Bar Italia for this, the second novel fuelled by their coffee.

Maps

Tiste Edur Lands and North Lether Frontier

Central Letheras

Editions

Show other languages

Publisher	Format/Edition	First published	Pages	ISBN-10	ISBN-13	Notes
UK and Commonwealth — Midnight Tides
Bantam	Hard cover	2004	698	0593046277	xxx	First edition
Bantam	Trade paperback	x	698	0593046285	xxx
Bantam	Mass market paperback	xxx	xxx	xxx	xxx
United States — Midnight Tides
Tor	Hard cover	Apr 2007	624	0765310058	978-0765310057	Cover by Todd Lockwood
Tor	Trade paperback	Apr 2007	624	076531651X	978-0765316516	Cover by Todd Lockwood
Tor	Hard cover, Science Fiction Book Club	xxx	xxx	xxx	xxx
Tor	Mass market paperback	Sept 2007	960	xxx	978-0-7653-4882-1
Subterranean Press	Hard cover	Jun 2015	752	xxx	xxx	Limited numbered/lettered editions Illustrated by Lauren St. Onge List of illustrations Scabandari Reign (lettered only) Turning Tide The Betrayer Private Collection The Warlock King

Plot Summary

The following summaries contain spoilers
Please access individual chapter summaries via the Chapter infobox

Book One: Frozen Blood

Epigraph

There is a spear of ice, newly thrust into the heart of the land. The soul within it yearns to kill. He who grasps that spear will know death. Again and again, he shall know death. Hannan Mosag's Vision

Book Two: Prows of the Day

Epigraph

We are seized in the age of our youth dragged over this road’s stones spent and burdened by your desires. And unshod hoofs clatter beneath bones to remind us of every fateful charge upon the hills you have sown with frozen seeds in this dead earth. Swallowing ground and grinding bit we climb into the sky so alone in our fretted ways a heaving of limbs and the iron stars burst from your heels baffling urgency warning us of your savage bite. Destriers (Sons to Fathers) Fisher kel Tath

Chapter 7

Here, Udinaas travels into another metaphysical realm and Feather Witch makes some foreboding prophecies. One of which tells the listeners to 'beware the three brothers".

Book Three: All That Lies Unseen

Epigraph

The man who never smiles Drags his nets through the deep And we are gathered To gape in the drowning air Beneath the buffeting sound Of his dreaded voice Speaking of salvation In the repast of justice done And fed well on the laden table Heaped with noble desires He tells us all this to hone the edge Of his eternal mercy Slicing our bellies open One by one. In the Kingdom of Meaning Well Fisher kel Tath

Book Four: Midnight Tides

Epigraph

Kin mourn my passing, all love is dust The pit is cut from the raw, stones piled to the side Slabs are set upon the banks, the seamed grey wall rises Possessions laid out to flank my place of rest All from the village are drawn, beating hides Keening their grief with streaks in ash Clawed down their cheeks, wounds on their flesh The memory of my life is surrendered In fans of earth from wooden shovels And were I ghostly here at the edge of the living Witness to brothers and sisters unveiled by loss Haunters of despair upon this rich sward Where ancestors stand sentinel, wrapped in skins I might settle motionless, eyes closed to dark’s rush And embrace the spiral pull into indifference Contemplating at the last, what it is to be pleased Yet my flesh is warm, the blood neither still in my veins Nor cold, my breathing joining this wind That carries these false cries, I am banished Alone among the crowd and no more to be seen The stirrings of my life face their turned backs The shudders of their will, and all love is dust Where I now walk, to the pleasure of none Cut raw, the stones piled, the grey wall rising. Banished Kellun Adara

Trivia

• One of Erikson's goals in writing the novel was to create a self-contained tragedy--a type of story he feels is going extinct as an art form. He says it is the first of the ten original Malazan books that "is definitely a tragedy with fantastic elements, rather than a fantasy with tragic elements", and it set a precedent for the entire series and how he wanted to handle its conclusion in the final book.
• Erikson says Midnight Tides was partly inspired by a driving vacation from Winnipeg to South Dakota. While stopping at roadside cafes and gas stations, he often saw collections of spear points on display that were the "legacy of...eight or nine thousand years of [human] occupation" in the region. He was already interested in the culture of the Lakota Sioux and picked up books about them at museums on the trip. He describes one of the main drives of Midnight Tides as exploring the question: "What would have happened if the Lakota Sioux were actually successful in defeating the United States Cavalry and marching on Washington."
• Midnight Tides was the most effortless of the Malazan books for Erikson to write. The book "wrote itself, it just came out." He estimates it took three and a half months to write.
• According to Erikson, he wrote part of Midnight Tides on a Psion 7 word processor.
• Erikson enjoys working on his novels in public places. Midnight Tides was written at Bar Italia in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He also wrote House of Chains and The Bonehunters, as well as the final portion of Memories of Ice, at the same location.

Cover gallery

US hardcover

Bulgarian cover art

Cover of the Subterranean Press version by Lauren Saint-Onge

Spanish cover by Lauren Saint-Onge

French cover art, Leha, 2020

German cover art - Part 1

German cover art - Part 2

External links

• Midnight Tides Q&A at Tor.com
• Steven Erikson Interview - Midnight Tides - Ten Very Big Books
• Critical Conversations 02: Midnight Tides Chapter 16 with Steven Erikson - A Critical Dragon
• Critical Conversations 05: Midnight Tides Chapter 19 with Steven Erikson - A Critical Dragon

Notes and references

List of abbreviations • Paginations • How to reference an article