Looking for a book about out of body experiences and entering dragons minds

Question

One of the major themes in this book is a specific berry/fruit that, when eaten, causes the person who eats it to slip into a coma and have an out of body experience. They can then float around at will in their incorporeal form. However, there are limits, whoever eats the berry/fruit has to "re-enter" their body within a certain time period, or their body will "die" (because of the coma state of their physical form). The more berries/fruits a person eats at once, the stronger the effect will be and the faster/further they will be able to travel in their incorporeal form, however the more dangerous it is (as the berries/fruits are highly toxic).

There is also a scene in the novel where a the incorporeal form of a female (one of the main characters, taking the coma-causing berries/fruits to use as a tactical reconnaissance maneuver during a war involving dragons) meets up with the incorporeal form of a male (also a main character and love interest(?) of the female) who is also taking the berries/fruits (I believe to find the female as she has not returned to her physical body in some time). From what I remember, they are both above a battlefield in this scene, and they cannot find their way back to their host bodies. So, they "re-enter" themselves into the mind of a dragon instead of their host bodies, and promptly proceed to essentially have sex inside of the dragon's mind.

There are several other scenes/plot lines leading up to this part of the book, from what I remember the specific scene above was near the ending of the book.

I know this book was quite thick, and may have been a compilation of multiple related stories or possibly a series compilation.

I've already taken a look at the Pit Dragon Trilogy, and the Pern novels, and those aren't it.

Answer 1

This is likely Piers Anthony's Dragon's Gold, first book of the Kelvin of Rud series.

The Prophecy: A Roundear there Shall Surely be; Born to be Strong, Raised to be Free; Fighting Dragons in his Youth; Leading Armies, Nothing Loth; Ridding his Country of a Sore; Joining Two, then uniting Four; Until from Seven there be One; Only then will his Task be Done. When Kelvin was a child, his mother read to him from the Book of Prophecy and he asked what the poem meant. Now he was about to learn. The Kingdom of Rud languishes under the heel of a usurper; an evil sorcerer has taken the throne in the name of his wicked daughter. Even deep in the forest, away from all power, the people tremble and await the day of prophecy's fulfillment. It cannot come too soon: Charlain and her children are soon to lose their home to the tax collector. But Kelvin and Jon have other plans. they have found a dragon's territory, where scales of purest gold, shed by the dragon, lie free on the ground for anyone with courage, or innocence, to take. And the words of Mouvar the prophet echo across Rud.

The berries in question are poisonous to most, but Kelvin, as a "Round Ear", instead gets the OOBE experience when he eats them as a slave, trying to escape his drudgery. Not long after, he acquires a set of gauntlets, I think from the crook of a lightning struck tree, which are very durable and insulative, but he also uses them for the mundane act of cracking nuts. He finds another Round Ear, Heln, who can also do the OOBE thing with the berries.

It was followed by four sequels, Serpent's Silver, Chimaera's Copper, Orc's Opal, and Mouvar's Magic that follow the adventures of Kelvin and his family across multiple worlds of varying magic and technology.