Synopsis "Dream of the Dragon Pool: A Daoist Quest"
Dream of the Dragon Pool - A Daoist Quest is a novel-length tale woven around the historical fact of the death-sentence exile of China's greatest poet, Li Bo (701-762 A.D.). This is a wuxia adventure story of magic, myth, and occult powers written as traditional Chinese-style heroic fiction. Forced by the emperor's exile order, Li Bo travels the Yangtze river, toward certain death in distant Burma/Myanmar. Along the way, he unwittingly befriends the emperor's most powerful shamaness who is trying to escape from palace life to Mount Wu and serve the mythical Rain Goddess, legendary mistress of that sacred mountain. Li Bo accidentally awakens the dark forces of the Blood Dragon, a mythical Chinese water creature, and its ghostly followers in pursue of a magical sword, the mythical Dragon Pool Sword, that he receives in a dream from a Daoist Immortal. The cast is rounded out by Li's bodyguard/companion, a wandering blade veteran of the Tang dynasty's Central Asian conquests, known as the "Iron Talon;" a mysterious swordsman/musician, who travels with a ghost-catching drunken monkey; a "dream assassin," capable of killing people from within their dreams; and a blond, green-eyed, Central Asian female ghost, enslaved by the Blood Dragon's powers. All the characters are authentically inspired by medieval Chinese "tales of wonder" storywriters and woven together by the author, a medieval China scholar turned novelist. Among other awards, Dream of the Dragon Pool was chosen for inclusion in the Penn State University Introduction to Chinese Religions course.
