Daksha the Medicine Girl

Daksha, the Medicine Girl, is about a young girl living in a hamlet in the Himalayas. Having lost her family in flash floods, she spends a lot of time with a vaidya (the doctor practicing native medicine) and learns the use of herbs and roots. A chance encounter puts her skill to test and changes her life, everyone says, for the better. But she likes her life as it is......This is the first book in the CoM (Cult of Musk) series.In 2194, Mars is colonized. The descendants of 21st century industrialist Elon Musk, founder of Musk City, Mars, form the ruling elite on the Red Planet. The Musk clan is about to face a historical event as one of their own, Lazar Musk Whittaker, a Biomech, embarks on an ambitious undertaking to change the course of human evolution. The war of the species and the fracture within the Musk clan begin when four tombs are discovered encased in an asteroid in a mining facility on Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons. As the Martians soon discover, these tombs contain the bodies of four aliens.In the future, Earth is a multi-humanoid society of Naturalopists (natural humans), Biomechs (biological-mechanical beings), cyborgs (part machine-part human), milbots (military robots), cilbots (civilian robots), and wobots (worker robots).“I liked this novel a lot...The plot of this novel is its strongest element...The author can put together a very strong plot, with plenty of twists and turns, and a good ending. There are some very suspenseful moments, and levels of tension are created which at their best evoke the sensations of a fine horror story. And the author, by and large, appears to have done his/her homework. The novel also has sociological touches which work well, especially its view of futuristic mega-capitalism. The venality, blindness, and excess of Udell Whittaker and his flunkeys is very believable, and adds depth to the story. The manner of day to day life, both in space and on the ‘colonies' of Mars seems well-researched and is often fascinating to the lay reader…” — Writers Guild of Alberta