Walking the Tree

Overview

Botanica is an island, but almost all of the island is taken up by the Tree. Little knowing how they came to be here, small communities live around the coast line. The Tree provides them shelter, kindling, medicine—and a place of legends, for there are ghosts within the trees who snatch children and the dying. Lillah has come of age and is now ready to leave her community and walk the tree for five years, learning all Botanica has to teach her. Before setting off, Lillah is asked by the dying mother of a young boy to take him with her. In a country where a plague killed half the population, Morace will otherwise be killed in case he has the same disease. But can Lillah keep the boy's secret, or will she have to resort to breaking the oldest taboo on Botanica?

Reviews

"Like walking from a dream into a mythical land both familiar and delightfully strange. A tale of tolerance and survival, in a fascinating and beautifully realised world." —Trudi Canavan, author of the Black Magician Trilogy

"Kaaron Warren is a fresh, amazingly talented voice out of Australia. You *must* read her work." —Ellen Datlow

“It is the setting that really makes the story and keeps the reader interested. The various communities of Botanica are well thought out and intriguing, and their differing attitudes towards disease, sex and the Tree constantly challenge Lillah’s thoughts and beliefs. It also draws on our own awareness of humanity’s evolution, and adds a sense of reality to the already convincing setting.” —Total SciFi Online

"Walking the Tree is an unpretentious, eye-opening experience. Dark but never dim, Karron Warren's first novel since she documented the psyche of a serial killer in her debut Slights is an insightful, earthy chronicle of diversity and understandings arrived at and remade. Hers is a voice that demands to be heard, and I don't doubt that this marvelous fable represents only the root of her talents." —Niall Alexander, The Speculative Scotsman

"... I found myself simply enchanted by the world Warren has built and enjoyed the journey through it just as much as any plot put forth to guide my way ... readers who value the path as much as the destination will surely love this tale ... Immersive and lovely, it’s a book to savor and revisit." —www.owlcatmountain.blogspot.com, January 2011

Author Biography

Shirley Jackson award-winner Kaaron Warren published her first short story in 1993 and has had fiction in print every year since. She was recently given the Peter McNamara Lifetime Achievement Award and was Guest of Honour at World Fantasy 2018, Stokercon 2019, and Geysercon 2019. Kaaron was a Fellow at the Museum for Australian Democracy, where she researched prime ministers, artists, and serial killers. She’s judged the World Fantasy Awards and the Shirley Jackson Awards. She's published five multi-award winning novels (Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, The Grief Hole, & Tide of Stone)