Walking the Tree

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?

Another astonishingly imaginative novel from the acclaimed author of Slights.

FILE UNDER: Fantasy [A Stunning World / An Epic Journey / A Terrifying Secret / Ghosts in the Tree]

KAARON WARREN’s award-winning short fiction has appeared in Year’s Best Horror & Fantasy, the Poe and Haunted Legends anthologies, Fantasy magazine, and many other venues in the US, Europe and Australia. Her short story “A Positive” has been made into a film called Patience. Her first novel, Slights, has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, and has been shortlisted for an Aurealis Award.