Congratulations and a happy journey to Robin Shortt, whose riveting wuxia fantasy novel The Marten and the Scorpion bursts upon our world today! The magnificent cover is by Candra Hope.

The Marten and the Scorpion is a cinematic adventure which unfurls in a medieval Samarkand awash in street gangs, assassins and martial-art secret societies. Balletic, intricate, steeped in Silk Road lore and lethal magic, the story cries out to become a film helmed by Zhang Yimou or Ang Lee. Here’s a reminder of the novel’s mouthwatering premise:

Darya scrapes a living as a pickpocket on the streets of Samarkand, a diverse metropolis at the centre of the Silk Road. If she wants to keep scraping a living, she’ll have to pass her gang’s initiation: a death-defying climb across the city’s rooftops. But she’s so exhausted and malnourished that it seems impossible, and her time is running out.

When a forbidding swordswoman arrives in Samarkand from the East, and hires the gang to search for a mysterious box, Darya sees her chance. She has stumbled on two more recent arrivals, young caravan guards who are also interested in the box and whatever’s inside. They’re as formidable in combat as the swordswoman…and they can fly, leaping from building to building better than any pickpocket.

Darya makes them an offer: If they teach her their skill enough for her to pass her gang’s test, she’ll help them find the box first. Meanwhile, more factions are drawn into the hunt, including a rival street gang, a sadistic ex-Crusader, and the dreaded Nizari Assassins. And each of Darya’s allies has a separate, secret agenda. What’s inside this coveted box, who will end up possessing it, and to what use will it be put?

Robin grew up in Canberra and lives in Vancouver. His stories have appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild anthology Winds of Change. His wildly original debut novel Wellside was shortlisted for the Aurealis award.

Wellside received enthusiastic reviews in Publishers Weekly, and from two well-known creators and genre aficionadas. Here are excerpts of their opinions:

Shortt (Wellside) plunges readers into the underbelly of medieval Samarkand in this beguiling fantasy. // Clever, tightly written, and full of action, this thrilling novel is an epic wuxia film wrought in paper and ink. – Publishers Weekly

Robin Shortt’s madly fast-paced, pungently vivid wuxia-influenced tale… //…a wildly colorful cast of characters… // …I relished this novel from beginning to end, and I really hope that there will be more adventures with Darya and her friends. — Sherwood Smith, creator of the Sartorias-deles universe and Wren’s world, Nebula award finalist, GoodReads

The Marten and the Scorpion is an extraordinary tapestry of mythologies, rich with adventure and secrets, and an urchin of a heroine, as ragged and tenacious as a broken blade. // I loved it. I devoured it. I want more. — Leife Shallcross, author of The Beast’s Heart, winner of the Aurealis award

The Marten and the Scorpion is available on Amazon, B&N, Kobo – and of course on our website, where buying the lovingly prepared trade paperback also brings along the full digital bundle (PDF, Epub and Mobi). As a reminder, it will take a couple of days post-launch for full linkage between print and digital versions on Amazon and B&N, and all C&G ebooks are DRM-free.