Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent is the sixth title in Short Stops, a series from Conversation Tree Press dedicated to bringing exceptional shorter works of fiction to life through beautifully bound, letterpress-printed, limited editions that begin shipping immediately upon announcement. 

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The author’s preferred and final version, expanded from its original publication.

Illustrated by Even Mehl Amundsen

“Serpent wine was alchemical venom, emerald sludge that roiled the stomach and set the blood pounding in one’s temples, an impractical poison devoid of subtlety. Somewhere between one glass and a whole bottle was anyone’s mortal breaking point. The entertainment lay in seeing whether a drinker had an accurate notion of where that point was.”

The novels in the acclaimed Gentleman Bastards series trace the exploits of an elite band of thieves and confidence artists moving through a richly imagined city-state shaped in the image of medieval Venice. In Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent, Scott Lynch returns to the cobblestones and canals of Camorr, offering a glimpse into the formative years of one of the young Gentleman Bastards.

Here, however, Locke is not yet the architect of elaborate deceptions, but a boy apprenticed to learn something wholly new and entirely unnatural: the discipline and meagre rewards of (mostly) honest, hard labour.

Set against the uproar of taverns and the quiet menace of the canals, the story focuses on an unlikely companionship and the education it affords.

First published in Grimdark Magazine, this edition has been expanded by the author and is considered his preferred and final version.

If this is your first visit to Camorr, you’ll find a tale that’s equal parts funny, tragic, and warm, while being entirely accessible as a standalone. If you’ve met any of the Gentleman Bastards before—well, you know what to expect.

Edition Information

Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent is a limited edition of 500 unnumbered copies. A brief overview of the edition, with additional details below:

• Artwork: Even Mehl Amundsen has contributed three full-colour illustrations, all of them fold-outs, printed separately and individually tipped in by hand.
• Typography: Interior design and typography are by Tony Geer.
• Letterpress printing: Scott Vile at the Ascensius Press printed the edition in Maine (United States) on Neenah Cotton Pearl White Letterpress 118gsm paper.
• Binding: Quarter-bound in book cloth and hand-marbled paper from Renato Crepaldi. The endpapers are GF Smith Colorplan with a linen finish.
• Format: The books have a trim size of 6in × 9in and 59 pages including front and back matter, making it our second-longest Short Stops title, just behind Beyond the Aquila Rift.
• Signatures: All copies are signed by the author and artist.
• Publication price: US$145.
• Availability: In stock and shipping from Canada and England.

The author’s name and title are foil stamped on the spine in the same style as the previous entries in our Short Stops series, ensuring a uniform look across the series.

Availability

Updated to add: this edition is now sold out.

Copies of Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent are now available to collectors who ordered copies of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle that came with publisher’s rights (i.e. Deluxe copies #1-200 and all Lettered copies), or those who had rights transferred to them. An email has been sent with a private link to order and copies will begin shipping tomorrow. If you did not receive an email and you believe you should have, please let me know.

Copies ship from Ontario, Canada and from England (limited quantity). For US collectors, we are only shipping with Canada Post and paying pre-processing fees on our end, so we do not expect any brokerage or other fees to be charged on shipments. However, we have no control over US government policy. Please see here for more information for US collectors specifically. 

For logistical and practical reasons we cannot combine orders for this title. Thank you for your understanding.

Artwork by Even Mehl Amundsen

Even Mehl Amundsen has contributed three full-colour illustrations, all of them fold-outs, printed separately and individually tipped in by hand. 

The look of the serpent wine in bottle held by Mazoc Szaba was inspired by Renato’s marbled paper.

About Even Mehl Amundsen

Even Mehl Amundsen is a freelance concept artist from Norway who has worked for studios like Karakter, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Riot, Axis Animation, Blur, Guerilla Games, Wizards of the Coasts, Volta, and many more. Besides that, he has been working on his own world shown in TEGN. He travels a lot, teaching what he has learned in workshops and giving advice to newcomers.

Hand-Marbled Paper by Renato Crepaldi

The hand-marbled paper was created by Renato Crepaldi in Brazil.

Typography

The title is set in Sproviero Type’s Fabiola Capitals, a charming all-caps typeface with just a bit of flair.

The body text has been set in Adobe Jenson.

Printing

The text of the edition was letterpress printed at Ascensius Press in Maine, United States. Under the direction of Scott Vile, the Ascensius Press offers book design, letterpress printing, and production coordination services, working with authors, publishers, libraries. They publish their own letterpress editions, and design and produce letterpress and offset works for many preeminent private libraries.

About Short Stops

Books in our Short Stops series are a little different from our other editions that come in multiple states. They:

• Are announced and offered for sale when they are completely finished and in hand, with shipping beginning on the same day we begin accepting orders.
  
• Feature shorter works of fiction.
• Have a trim size of 6in by 9in, slightly smaller than our other 6.7in by 9.5in books.
• Have no rights associated with them and do not include a slipcase.
• Always be offered to current Deluxe and Lettered rights-holders first, even though they have no rights attached to them. Rights holders may skip it entirely without losing rights to the next book from the Press, and having a copy of the most recently published book in the Short Stops series does not give any rights to the next in the series.

Scott Lynch

Scott Lynch was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1978, the first of three brothers. Early in life he worked as a dishwasher, a waiter, a graphic designer, an office manager, a cook, and a game supplement self-publisher before accidentally selling his first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, in 2004. From 2005 to 2016 Scott also served as a paid-on-call firefighter in Wisconsin. Scott currently lives in Massachusetts with his wife, award-winning SF/F novelist Elizabeth Bear, plus four cats (Duncan, Gurney, Molly, and Fafhrd) and a pair of Icelandic horses (a gelding named Ormr and a mare named Spola).