Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Feb 3, 2026
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- $11.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A FanFiAddict Most Anticipated Title!
How to Train Your Dragon meets Mad Max in this story of an orphan in a fractured Southwest who just wants to ride a dinosaur under the lights.
Come one, come all to the dinosaur rodeo!
Tif Tamim wants nothing more than to be a dinosaur buckaroo. An orphan in search of a place to rest his head and a job to weigh down his pockets, Tif has bounced from circus to circus, yearning for a chance to ride a prehistoric beauty under the sparkling lights of a big-top.
To become a buckaroo, Tif needs to learn the tools of the trade, yet few dino maestros want to take a scrawny nobody from nowhere under their wing. But when Tif frees a dino from an abusive owner and braves the roving gangs of the formerly-American west to bring the dino to safety, he catches someone’s eye. And boy, how those eyes dazzle Tif from the back of a bucking carnotaur.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bejeweled, dinosaur-riding buckaroos are the stars of the show in this equal-parts rollicking and poignant sci-fi novella from Hugo Award winner McDonald (The Wildling). Latif "Tif" Tamim loses his job as a wrangler at the dinosaur rodeo Dino!Dino! when he accidentally lets a Timursaur loose, inciting a high-speed chase that ends in tragedy. Forced to leave, he sets out on his own with only an ocarina, a musical instrument used to play dinosaur-charming songs, and a state-of-the-art bike that can't be stolen, a gift from one of the rodeo's mysterious clowns. As he travels through a post-apocalyptic Southwestern landscape looking for dino work, a private collector guilts him into taking an abused, aging carnotaur back in time to the Cretaceous where he belongs. Tif and his "carno" join up with Memphis Red's Tatterdemalion Circus, a disreputable traveling circus that ferries dinos to and from a time portal. As they journey, Tif grows to know and love all four members of the circus: expert wrangler Matilda, fearless leader Memphis, wise Silver Clown, and dazzlingly handsome buckaroo Prince. McDonald makes their trek exciting, thoughtful, immersive, and faintly absurd in the best way. It's a joy to watch Tif come into his own and the found-family elements delight. Dinosaur lovers and sci-fi fans are sure to fall for this inventive coming-of-age story.
