Curious King Books

15/08/2025

Legend is shipping everyone! It looks like UK-bound Deluxe’s have gone out already. Overseas Deluxe’s should be shipped on Wednesday coming for arrival on Friday for most customers.

Some people said theirs had no tracking notification, I have picked this up with Ludlow and they said they’ll ensure they go out with each one.

The Standards have been QC’d and are being packed as we speak. Distributor says they’ll leave on Tuesday morning! The tracking should come from The Broken Binding for all those keeping an eye out next week.

There was a 10 day delay on the Standards going out due to an issue with packing materials, so apologies for that.

Regarding the Lettered Edition I’ve been told rough estimate of shipping to be September 5th or w/c Sept 8th.

Thanks again for your patience on this one, we sincerely hope you feel it worthwhile once shipped!

Have a nice weekend everyone!

11/08/2025

Apologies for the radio silence all! I was away most of last week (I am one year older technically now).

I think there's a book you're waiting for, right? Ah yes. Legend.

The update is thus! The Standard's are all done and they have been picked up by the distributor and currently going through quality control as we speak ready for shipping.

Shipping should start at the end of this week for the Standard Edition. The Deluxe is hot on its heels and will be shipping next week (the bindery are already starting to pack them).

The Lettered towards to the end of the month, but will keep you all posted as the weeks come!

I cannot wait for these to land on people's doorsteps!

01/08/2025

Here's a Friday post for you guys as a little deviation from the usual content from me!

Most of you will know that I took on an assistant recently called Fio (who's great btw). Well Fio has his own cool projects going on as well and I thought some of you might dig them!

One of the things that I liked the most about Fio was the fact he has his own passions and projects that he's put time and effort into to get off the ground.

Fio and his partner Georgia are the producers of The Holmwood Foundation: an audio horror drama serialised in podcast format!

The pair have produced many audio stories before including work on Doctor Who! They funded and produced the first series via Kickstarter and are now working on Series 2. So cool.

I'm certain there will be some collectors here who enjoy both audio drama and horror, so please please check it out!

I know what you’re thinking, another blog post so soon? I’m full of surprises that’s for sure! Well this one is a little off-piste for us. But it’s absolutely worth sharing. By now you’ve been introduced to Fio, my new Publishing Assistant, who’s made a fantastic start so far. He’s def...

25/07/2025

Happy Friday everyone! It brings us great pleasure to release one of the colour pieces from our upcoming edition of Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie illustrated by the incredible Greg Manchess! This is just a quick picture of a piece and not the colour corrected scan FYI.

It’s a genuine honour to work with a living legend like Greg and having seen the art he has done thus far, he is absolutely living up to his reputation.

We’re nearly finished with the letterpress printing of LAOK and this is being done by Pat and Ellen at Nomad Letterpress and still on course to ship this year.

We have 9 colour pieces in total for this release, with 8 of these inside the book itself (1 is the exclusive dustjacket art for the Standard Edition). The quality of Greg’s work is amazing and so great to see traditional mediums used in book illustrating. Whoa doesn’t love oils on canvas???

For those who haven’t read the latest blog we will be putting some Standard copies of “Legend” by David Gemmell up on the website on Tuesday 29th of July at 20:00BST. The link you need is on our latest blog post.

That’s us for this week, have a cracking weekend everyone!

24/07/2025

Update time at Curious King towers! Well, I say towers, what I actually mean is the 2nd Floor in my house (to my US compadre's that's the 3rd Floor).

A few things to note before you dive in. Legend is tantalisingly close to being shipped, the bindery should have the books ready for collection in a week/10 days from the latest update I received.

We're also putting up a handful of cancelled copies of Legend Standard Edition on Tuesday 29th July at 20:00BST. The link you'll need to purchase is in the post below!

Not only that we have a new Publishing Assistant! Fio Trethewey started this week with me and will be tackling customer service and rights transfer to begin with. So all rights transfers are to go to our info@ address please.

For everything else CK, please give the blog a read then eh?!

Well, July has been an absolute whirlwind! You guys really went nuts on the Assassin’s Apprentice public pre-order and set a new CK record of 3 minutes… Honestly, I never envisioned it selling out that quickly (even after upping the numbers!), so a huge thank you to everyone who bought one and s...

16/07/2025

We’re still in disbelief about the speed of the Assassin’s Apprentice public pre-order last night, it was the quickest we’ve ever had! Sorry to those who weren’t able to get one in time.

A huge thanks to everyone who went in for the pre-order last night, it’s great to see people excited over our releases!

Now the dust has settled on the pre-order for AA we should really give some of our other titles some love as there are many in production. Shipping next is Legend by David Gemmell! We visited the bindery last week and were able to see it’s progress in the final stage!

Despite some rather frustrating delays we are now on the cusp of uniting them with their collectors. We’ll be sending out a “Have you moved?” email to owners of Legend as we run up to shipping.

Currently the Standard should be ready for shipping by the end of July. They’ll then be moved to the distributor for QC and shipping. Realistically to be in the hands of the couriers by the first/second week of August if not sooner.

The Deluxe will follow mid-August for immediate shipping from Ludlow and the Lettered are scheduled for end of August for shipping. Again, these are the latest estimates from my suppliers, they could change in the coming weeks.

There will be some Standard Editions and potentially a couple of Deluxe Editions going up on the website early August for immediate shipping.

We will let everyone well in advance when we set the date and the time for them going up.

15/07/2025

Well, i'm afraid to say they're all gone! And in 3 minutes as well, which is quite frankly insane.

Thanks to everyone who purchased, i'm genuinely blown away by that, I never expected a release this size to go so quickly!

Sorry to anyone who missed out. As with all our publications we usually end up having a handful to put back up on the site when the books start shipping.

We'll inform the two lucky people who secured Publishers Rights with their deluxe by 20:00BST July 16th. If you don't receive an email by then, then you were not successful.

Viva Robin Hobb!!!!

15/07/2025

The public pre-order for our fine-press edition of Robin Hobb’s “Assassin’s Apprentice” illustrated by Lixin Yin is now LIVE and available to purchase!

What more can we say about the incredible Farseer Trilogy and Robin Hobb’s first novel in the series? One of the most beautifully written and intoxicating fantasy series of all time and we hope you like our interpretation of it.

The release page is accessible from the home page on our website and we have sent out links to our newsletter subscribers.

All three tiers are available following the Publishers Rights holder period and every book comes with Series Rights to the remaining two books in the Farseer Trilogy which we will be publishing in 2026 and 2027!

Assassin’s Apprentice – Robin Hobb “When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.” – Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Apprentice We sprang to this idea some years ago. Whilst there are other limited editions of this brilliant piece...

11/07/2025

It was an absolute pleasure to spend Wednesday this week with two of the best publishers and book designers in the industry. Tony from Conversation Tree Press and Rich from Lyra's Books.

Being able to chat books, approach to concept and design with people as talented as them is a real privalege. To see companies in the same industry lift eachother up rather than tear down is another reason small press is one of the best industries to be in! Everytime I think I'm putting out something worthy, whenever I see one of their new releases I am quickly reminded I have so much to learn.

If you've been living under a rock then I strongly advise you to look at the work both CTP and Lyras do as it's some of the best in the world. I collect from both and I highly recommend their work.

I also sent out a newsletter today with a guide regarding the Public Pre-order of Assassin's Apprentice on Tuesday. If you're planning on buying a copy then it's worthwhile reading it!

Happy Friday everyone

08/07/2025

Hello,

In our excitement and haste to release details of Assassin's Apprentice it appears EVERYONE got the email for the private PR holders page.

We have since set up a new password for the rights holders and will have to refund any orders from none rights holder purchasers. We sincerely apologise for the mistake, but working on Robin Hobb's masterpiece does something to us!

The public pre-order is still set for July 15th at 20:00BST for non-rights holders!

Kind Regards

Anthony

08/07/2025

It’s time. Time we did the full reveal of our upcoming fine-press edition of Robin Hobb’s “Assassin’s Apprentice” illustrated by Lixin Yin!

This has been nearly 2 years in the making so far and it’s been a genuine honour and a pleasure to work on this phenomenal series. The Farseer Trilogy is quite rightly in the top 10 of nearly every fantasy fans all-time list. It is a beautifully written story about young Fitz and his propulsion into the royal family of the Six Duchies. It’s more than just an elegant and mystical story, it’s a real character-study into the mind of a boy caught up in a world where he doesn’t feel he belongs.

Lixin Yin has produced 12 stunning pieces of art for this release, with 11 of these contained within the book (the 12th is the exclusive Standard dustjacket art). There is also a newly designed colour fold-out map included.

We will be releasing each of the three books over the next three years, with Royal Assassin planned for 2026 and Assassin’s Quest in 2027. Right now however, we have the first release Assassin’s Apprentice!

Released over our three core-tiers, the Standard, Deluxe and Lettered. All books come with Series Rights to the next book in the series, so buyers need not worry about fighting it out on public pre-order day for books 2 and 3. These rights will last with any potential future Hobb releases, but currently none are planned.

With it being such an iconic title, the design and concept process took me a very long time to get it where it is. I have to remind myself that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but I sincerely hope that fans of Hobb and Curious King like at least one of the tiers.

Public pre-order is set for July 15th at 20:00BST and we will be sending out direct links to product pages on Friday and Monday coming. There is also a section on the blog about how you can order yours when the day comes.

For the full release details please follow the link below!

“When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.” – Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Apprentice We sprang to this idea some years ago. Whilst there are other limited editions of this brilliant piece of fiction, we still absolutely had to...