The novel takes the reader to a distant eastern continent, which seventy thousand years ago lost contact with the main civilization of the planet. Here they worship gods long forgotten in other countries; here they still use the primitive magic of the “Strongholds”. But there are properties in which local cultures are not inferior to Western states: greed, cruelty and the desire for unlimited power. Residents of the kingdom of Lether believe that their ruler is destined to revive the power of the First Empire of Man. What kind of empire can manage without many peoples under its jurisdiction? And so the “semi-wild” tribes, one after another, become victims of the military and economic expansion of the Letherians. Only the six clans of the Tiste Edur, the People of the Shadow, living in the north retained their independence. King Ezgara had already condemned them to subjection and slavery; as it seems, the only question is choosing a suitable reason for a new war... As it seems. After all, the sorcerer Hannan Mosag, who united six Edur tribes, found himself a mysterious and very powerful friend, who revealed to him the secrets of murderous magic and sent him unexpected allies. Not satisfied with this, Mosag asks to be given a powerful weapon. The mysterious benefactor agreed, and so four brothers from a noble family set off into the ice fields in search of the artifact. Alas, the “friend” decided to give the gift not to Mosag, but to someone less intelligent, and therefore more manageable. Now the Edur themselves are ready to found an empire and crush Lether to the south. Everyone involved in the maelstrom of war will have to decide: are there any limits to loyalty to one’s native state, if its rulers have crossed all boundaries of treachery and cruelty? Everyone who retained their honor and pride will have to either openly challenge the new tyrant, or flee, devoting themselves to finding a way out of a hopeless situation. For how to kill someone who draws strength from his own death? The action of the novel "Midnight Tide" begins a little earlier than the events described in the first novel ("Gardens of the Moon"), and therefore its plot is almost not directly related to the previous books in the series; so the absence of the fourth novel in the Russian translation will not prevent the reader from understanding the content of the fifth novel. It should only be mentioned that the fourth novel, House of Chains, tells how a young warrior from the Edur tribe, Thrall Sengar, was cursed by his fellow tribesmen and abandoned to a slow death in a world that suffered a devastating flood. However, he is saved by a lone Imass named Onrek, who accidentally found himself in the same fragment of Kurald Emurlann. Together they manage to leave the dying world. After many adventures, Onrek and Thrall became friends. At the end of the novel, as the friends prepare to defend the hidden throne of the First Empire from the attacks of the villain known as the Bound God, Thrall promises to begin the story of the reason for his exile from the tribe. Obviously, this story is the novel "Midnight Tide"...