Every Friday, Suvudu runs a feature called 50 Page Friday. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that they post the first fifty pages of a book, free of charge, to get you hooked. You know, like a drug dealer. This past week, they released a sneak peek at one of the year’s most anticipated novels: The Republic of Thieves.

Over on Suvudu, Lynch’s editor discusses the novel and why the rabid anticipation is justified:

I have said before that a good editor, like a good mom, tries not to play favorites. But sometimes you just can’t help it. Twice in my career, the same thing has happened to me—albeit with two different authors. Because twice I have received the first 100 or so pages of as-yet-uncompleted epic fantasy novels on submission, and twice I have felt that special shiver of gut-deep excitement and sheer acquisitiveness that said: This is something TRULY special. I must own this, and edit this. Like…NOW!

The first time I felt that was when I was given the first few chapters of a what would one day grow into A Game of Thrones. And the second time? Well, that was when I first encountered Scott Lynch. As with George Martin, I fell instantly in love with Scott’s words and Scott’s world, and then suffered (in not-quite silence) for the next year before I could finally discover What Happened Next!

The Lies of Locke Lamora is, to my mind, one of the world’s almost perfect books. It is epic, dramatic—almost operatic in its sense of glory and tragedy—and yet laugh aloud funny when it is not making you weep. The characters and the world are as memorable as any you will ever see on paper, and the concept alone—that of con men operating in a fantasy world that has never really encountered the art of the con—is sheer brilliance.

I’ll have a review of The Republic of Thieves soon, but, as a little sneak peek of my own, I’ll just say that I enjoyed the novel immensely and, despite my high expectations (and cautious optimism), Lynch impressed me with his ability to evolve the formula that worked so successfully in The Lies of Locke Lamora (if not so well in Red Seas Under Red Skies), and produced a novel that reminded me of why I fell in love with his world, characters and fiction so easily in the first place.

You can read the first 51 pages of The Republic of Thieves on Scribd… then, once you’re done that, you can salivate over the idea that the rest of the book’s only a few days away.