Trese, Vol. 6: High Tide at Midnight by Budjette Tan and KaJo Baldisimo

I think there's more to this story, that hasn't made it to my side of the Pacific yet. But that's nothing new for Trese - I said the same after the first three books, in 2010, when none of them had been published in the US yet. So I can wait, and maybe not expect, but anticipate and hope, to see an eventual seventh volume.

Trese, the series, is about a supernatural investigator: a young woman named Alexandra Trese, from a family intimately connected with the supernatural for generations. So far, so similar to a flood of contemporary fantasy starting in the '90s and plenty of "romantasy" today. But she lives in Manila, and the supernatural world she knows is particular and specific to the Philippines - and so strange and distinct and more fantastic to those of us from other places.

From the beginning, writer Budjette Tan used entirely local monsters and powers: these books, as published in the US by Ablaze, have short text features after each issue-length story to each explain one supernatural race or personage. He also made sure never to explain more than he had to, and kept a noir-ish tone to the proceedings, very appropriate for a place like Manila, a big city full of money and business and corruption and dark history.

And artist KaJo Baldisimo was also wonderful from the beginning, delivering gloriously inky pages of violence and terror and wonder and surprise, lovingly textured and filled with unique faces and (if I may use a cliché) even more unique monsters.

High Tide at Midnight is the sixth collection: there's a 2014 afterword from Tan, but this US edition was published in September of 2023. (Which is what makes me think there are more stories out there, from the past decade.) It picks up on major story threads from the fifth volume, Midnight Tribunal, [1] particularly the figure of The Madame - who is this fantasy world's version of a person many readers will recognize from the real world - and tells one long story in multiple parts, during a particularly devastating typhoon that hits and floods Manila.

In our world, a big storm is a force of nature. In Trese's world, there are powers that control storms - control water, control air, control fire, and so on. So a gigantic storm doesn't just happen: someone made it, for a purpose. And someone is taking advantage of it.

I shouldn't say much more than that. The Madame does get involved. There is a plot by supernatural entities to get more power. There's a new drug that effects supernatural beings in frightening, dangerous ways. Some of the supernatural creatures are very eager to kill humans, as often happens in stories like this. And Alexandra Trese can't handle this massive danger alone. Good thing she has four brothers and other allies - before this book is over, a larger group of Philippine supernatural protectors comes together, some people we've seen before in this series, some new, and go into a massive battle.

This is the biggest Trese story yet, and the series title is even more true: this is not just the story of Alexandra Trese, but of her family as a whole, all of them engaged in the family business, navigating the murky, turbulent waters between the human and supernatural worlds of the Philippines.

I wouldn't jump into the series here, but I do recommend getting here. Start with the first book, and know there's at least this much more waiting for you.

[1] Also see my posts on the earlier books: one, two, three, four.