Happy Publication Day to Saladin Ahmed!

All this week we’ve been giving you extracts from THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON, the debut novel from Saladin Ahmed. We hope they’ve whetted your appetite, and that you’re planning to check out one of the most interesting fantasy debuts of recent years. The book is officially published today, so please join all of us in congratulating Saladin on being a published Gollancz author. I know where he’s planning to take his series, and we’re all in for a treat. I hope you’ll pick up a copy of THRONE and try it out.

But just in case you weren’t convinced by the extracts, my wittering on about how much I loved it, the plethora of good reviews of the American edition, here’s one more present for you. Gollancz and Saladin have produced a free ebook, THE CRESCENT MOON KINGDOMS SAMPLER. It contains the first FIVE chapters of the book, two short stories set in the Crescent Moon Kingdoms, an exclusive piece describing some of Saladin’s settings and creatures, and an exclusive interview between Scott Lynch and Saladin! You can download it from any of your normal eBook retailers, although only in the countries where we have rights to the series – so certainly not America or Canada, sadly, and other locations may vary –  and I hope you enjoy it. Do let us know what you think, either here on the blog or on Twitter, where Saladin is @saladinahmed and I am @marcusgipps.

The celebrate the release, we’re also giving away proof copies of the book to five lucky readers. To enter, read the first chapter, and answer the question: How old is Adoulla? Email your answers to competitions@orionbooks.co.uk with the subject line THRONE by 24th January 2013, including your postal details. Good luck!