| Kingdom of the Golden Dragon | |
| Title Orig: | El Reino del Dragón de Oro |
| Translator: | Margaret Seyers Peyden |
| Author: | Isabel Allende |
| Language: | Spanish |
| Publisher: | Rayo/ HarperCollins |
| English Pub Date: | May 2005 |
| Media Type: | |
| Pages: | 437 |
| Isbn: | 0-06-058943-4 |
| Congress: | PZ7.A43912 Ki 2004 |
| Oclc: | 56490511 |
| Preceded By: | City of the Beasts |
| Followed By: | Forest of the Pygmies |
Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (Spanish; Castilian: El Reino del Dragón de Oro) is a 2004 book by Chilean writer Isabel Allende. It is the sequel to City of the Beasts and the prequel to Forest of the Pygmies.
The plot is set in the Forbidden Kingdom, a fictional remote Himalayan country. A Buddhist lama named Tensing takes his disciple, Prince Dil Bahadur, to the Valley of the Yeti to find healing plants that do not grow anywhere else. They find themselves ringed by the yetis just as they drink in the sights, but the matriarch saves them and says that the fast-dwindling yetis have lost their forebears’ unparalleled mental powers.
The lamas teach them to milk the goats so that they can feed their cubs, and it turns out that the local fountains are toxic. The beasts’ health improves once they start shunning the fountains, and in order to thank the strangers they give them the plants they have asked for.
Meanwhile, Alex Cold and his grandmother Kate, an International Geographic reporter, depart from Brazil for New York. He gives her the diamond eggs that his friend Nadia has found near the Amazon and tells her to raise money for the People of the Mist—the South American tribe that he bonded with in City of the Beasts—as well as for other Indios. Kate, who questions the diamonds’ value, shows them to Isaac Rosenblat, a New York jeweler who confirms their unparalleled worth; he has never seen like-sized stones. Six months later, the Diamond Foundation is set up with the help of Ludovic Leblanc, an anthropologist who is Kate's nemesis. Now tasked with writing about the Forbidden Kingdom, she takes Nadia and Alex with her despite her employer's misgivings.
At the same time, the world's second-richest man—who is called the Collector—pays a crime lord known as the Specialist to steal the kingdom's national treasure, a golden dragon with unrivaled magical skills. The Collector wants to use its gifts of prophecy to predict stock and make himself the world's richest man.
Soon after landing in Asia, Kate and her friends are caught up in a plot to kidnap indigenous girls. When Nadia, who is taken for a native, is captured along with her newfound friend Pema, Alex and Kate enlist the prince, his teacher, the kingdom's forces, and the yetis to track down the abductees.