Midnight Tides

Executive Summary: I'm surprised to be giving this book 4 stars. It started as a 2 for me. My enjoyment slowly built as the book when on, and in the end I enjoyed it overall.Full ReviewSo I gave this book 4 stars, which means I liked it, but I'm going to start off with a bit of a rant about this series that has been festering for the last 6 weeks or so as I've read this book.[a:Steven Erikson 31232 Steven Erikson http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1219169436p2/31232.jpg] writes some of the WORST beginnings to books I have ever read. And it's not because he can't write them. [b:House of Chains 55398 House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #4) Steven Erikson http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1316729521s/55398.jpg 836472] shows that he can write a straightforward and comprehensible beginning, despite changing locations and introducing many new characters. I enjoyed that book all the way through.No book in the series so far has shown this fact more than this one. I was about ready to quit the book in frustration. He introduced what seemed like 20 new characters in the span of maybe 2 chapters. This book has all of one character in it from the previous 4 books. And he was a relatively minor character that I was pretty indifferent towards. None of it made much sense to me.I'm apparently not the typical Malazan fan in this. Everyone else seems to enjoy being thrown into the deep end at the start of each book. I don't. I'm pretty tired of it by now as my rant may indicate. I just don't get why all the hardcore Malazan fans do. I guess that means I'll never be one of them. Then again there are still 5 more books to go.I'm really enjoying this series so far, but Mr. Erikson seems to go out of his way to alienate potential fans in my opinion. I don't mind all the layering and complex foreshadowing he does. I certainly don't get even a third of it, but it doesn't bother me. It just makes me feel pretty dumb/unobservant in a group reading setting.OK, now that I got that off my chest. This book is sort of odd. The whole thing is a flash back. It's hard to say exactly when it occurs. It seems like the near past. I feel like this story might better have been told earlier in the series. Maybe it's beginning would have frustrated me less then, but probably not.There are some really great characters in this book though. They are largely responsible for my enjoyment of this book. Mr. Erikson seems to have this obsession with pairs of characters, and Tehol and Bugg are now only second to Quick Ben and Kalam as my favorites.Iron Bars is probably now one of my favorites as well. I wish we had gotten to see more of him in this book that we did. Hopefully we'll see more of him later in the series.This book is much less action-packed than the previous four. There is a lot more politics in this one. That doesn't make it any less gruesome and dark. Just like the rest of the series, there are some truly disturbing scenes in this book.As I got my feet about me again and got past the horrible beginning, I moved into a solid 3 territory. The ending of this was quite enjoyable, and the book became hard to put down. This bumped it to a 4 star by the end, which is saying a lot since I started at barely a 2.I can't wait to jump into [b:The Bonehunters 478951 The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #6) Steven Erikson http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320434864s/478951.jpg 3898723], especially since most of my favorite characters look to be back. Likely to die in some horrible fashion the way this series seems to be going, but I'll continue to read in morbid fascination.