Daughter of the Dragon Tree

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Pub Date 11 Dec 2018 | Archive Date 5 Oct 2018
Inner Traditions | Bear & Company

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Description

Two young women, with intertwined fates centuries apart, must protect the secret of the powerful, all-healing mushroom known as amakuna

• The gripping story includes mystical visions, shamanic rituals, past lives, an ancient lineage of medicine women, love, betrayal, conspiracies, and murder

• Set concurrently in modern times and in 1492 during the Conquistadors’ takeover of the Canary Islands

1492: For millennia, the medicine women of the Guanches, the indigenous people on the Canary Island of La Palma, have used a psychotropic mushroom to look into the past and the future. But the mushroom has other sacred powers: It can cure disease or injury and it links the fate of those who consume it across all eternity. These secret powers are closely guarded by the medicine women, for they can foresee the destructive forces that would be unleashed if the sacred mushroom fell into the wrong hands.

Present day: Romy, a young doctor at a biomedical research company, sets out alone on a rock-climbing trek near her home in Germany. Halfway through her climb, an unusual panic overtakes her and she blacks out as she falls more than 25 feet from the face of a cliff . . . Coming to, hours later, she finds herself in a cave, remarkably unscathed, with a strange taste in her mouth as well as a vivid recollection of an ancient ritual centered on a sacred mushroom called “amakuna.”

Plagued by visions from the amakuna ceremony, including the death of an old medicine woman under a peculiar looking tree and the appointment of a young apprentice, Iriomé, to take her place, Romy begins to feel as if Iriomé is trying to contact her across the centuries. Identifying the tree from the visions as a Canarian Dragon Tree, she heads to the Canary Island of La Palma to discover the truth behind her visions and her and Iriomé’s intertwined fates.

In the heart of the island’s volcanic crater, she discovers the reality of the strange mushroom and its magical, all-healing, all-seeing powers. She brings some of the mushroom back to Germany and experiments with it, leading to repeated flashbacks of Iriomé’s life. But pharmaceutical mega-corporations are already in hot pursuit of her and will stop at nothing to take possession of the amakuna--not even murder.

As Romy and Iriomé’s lives continue to parallel across the centuries, they both find themselves in love with powerful men, pregnant, far from home, and in danger. But while Iriomé’s fate is in the past and sealed, Romy’s has not yet been decided, nor has the fate of the mushroom, which she learns has the power to either destroy life or preserve it. Will Romy be able to protect the powerful amakuna secret, as generations of medicine women have done before her? Or will she fall victim to betrayal as Iriomé did, and be forced to destroy the sacred mushroom before it can destroy the planet?

Two young women, with intertwined fates centuries apart, must protect the secret of the powerful, all-healing mushroom known as amakuna

• The gripping story includes mystical visions, shamanic...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781591433156
PRICE US$20.00 (USD)
PAGES 448

Average rating from 4 members


Featured Reviews

I loved this book.I'm not normally a fan of books that go back in time but this is so well written I couldn't stop reading.

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An absolutely fantastic and wholly original book. The story and characters will draw readers in and the fantasy and mystical elements will capture and hold the reader's attention.
4 Stars

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If you're like me, you're going to read the description of this book and think that it's so interesting you can't pass it up. Although it's a massive book, over four hundred pages, I devoured it in under five hours, and I believe that you could too if you wanted to. Romy, from Germany, is feeling impulsive after learning that her friend, Thea, has cancer. Usually they rock climb together, but because of her illness, she hasn't been able to in a long time. Though Romy is confident in her skills, mistakes happen, and climbing without a harness is one of them. Of course, she falls twenty five feet.

But that's when something strange happens. She's knocked unconscious for over seven hours. While she's out, she has a kind of vision, of a girl named Iriome, who lives in the Canary Islands. She learns about a healing ceremony, and watches as the aged medicine woman takes her own life and warns her students of men who will come and take from them, and don't care about anything but themselves.

She wakes up unharmed, with a strange taste in her mouth, and her life is forever changed. She spends a long time after that tracking down the origin of the ritual, in a race against the clock to heal her sick friend. But that's not all this book has to offer. It's also a tale of Iriome, losing her identity and whole community as a war takes place around her in 1492.

The first thing I have to say about this book, is actually two things, and they are that I usually don't like historical fiction, and I don't usually like stories with two points of view, but this book is a game changer. The characters are very realistic, not only in how they act but what they do, and I think anyone would do the same thing if they were in the character's place. I think my favourite character is Iriome, just because she goes through so much and is able to come out somewhat clean on the other side.

The world that the book is set in is present day Germany, and 1492 in the Canary Islands. It was really interesting to see this parallel to the world that we live in, and I really enjoyed the blurb at the back that explained what actually happened, in out lives. I'm not really sure what to compare this to, but I think that if you think it's something you would like, you should definitely give it a shot. It's easy to get into, and once you start it, you can't put it down.

Thanks for reading!
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

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