$8.99 paperback, when it opens
Not on sale yet. Nothing here has cleared the publisher’s own gate: no volume has a typeset interior, a print wrap, or an ISBN in either format, and the ebook price has not been ruled. Every free page on this site is finished and true — the whole first chapter, ten Field Notes, ten builds — and the shop opens when the books do. Write to orders@dinoroost.com to be told when.
Dinoroost · Book Nine of ten
The Law of the Roost
She comes up the river and asks the Roost for one thing, out loud, in front of everybody — and says she will not come back and ask twice.
Downriver, a hundred and twelve kids live in a flooded ballpark and put steel collars on their dinosaurs. Their First, Corva Quist, wants the map the Roost’s scout spent three years drawing — thirteen feet of paper, board and painted canvas that points at one blank circle nobody has ever walked into.
Forty kids in seven impossible trees vote to trace her a copy and hand it over in nine days. Nine days sounds generous. It is not generous — it is exactly how long a collar runs.
This one is about what a village owes the people it did not warn.
The picture out of this one
A spiral of children coming down the ratlines into gold light, palms turned down, facing a hundred loose animals on the Apron.
The spotlight
the whole village
anchored on Lars
Rider, and the boy who says yes to everybody. He is the only person here who swims, and he says I’ll get that nine times a day and means it every time.
Matched to Bramble, Deinonychus. The runt of his clutch and finished growing. A crooked outer toe ticks on plank decking, so the whole Roost always knows he is coming — and he will not put a foot in water.
In the back — Field Notes
Deinocheirus
Deinocheirus — the dinosaur that was nothing but a pair of arms for fifty years.
In the back — Make It
The one-pin release: how a rig comes off an animal in about a second, with no tool.
Household junk, numbered steps, under thirty minutes, and a number the child writes down at the end.
| Spotlight | the whole village, anchored on Lars |
| Reading age | Ages 9-12 · Grades 4-6 · grade 3–4 text under a grade 4–6 story |
| Length | 22,725 words · eighteen chapters · a two-hour read |
| 5.5 x 8.5 in · Paperback, perfect bound, black-and-white interior · about 136 pages, not yet confirmed from a proof | |
| Paperback ISBN | not yet issued |
| EPUB ISBN | not yet issued |
| Illustrations | None yet — text and cover |
| Content | Peril yes, cruelty no. No child dies, no swearing, no romance, and nothing anybody builds is meant to hurt anyone |
| Written by | Jory Hark — a pen name |
Questions about this one
Eight answers,
from this book’s own file.
Every one of these is a fact out of the manuscript or the catalogue rather than a sales line — the measured word count, the drawings that actually exist, the animal on the nonfiction page at the back.
What happens in The Law of the Roost?
She comes up the river and asks the Roost for one thing, out loud, in front of everybody — and says she will not come back and ask twice.
Who is it about?
the whole village, anchored on Lars. A spiral of children coming down the ratlines into gold light, palms turned down, facing a hundred loose animals on the Apron.
How long is The Law of the Roost?
About 22,725 words across eighteen chapters, a cold open and a tag - roughly a two-hour read for a confident reader in the 9-12 band.
Is it illustrated?
Not yet. This volume ships with a cover and no interior drawings; Books One, Two and Three have eighteen each.
Do I have to read the others first?
Reading order is publication order, and there is no other order. This is Book Nine of ten, and it closes its own problem, so it can be read on its own - but the season runs a clock under all ten and it reads better in order.
What is the nonfiction page at the back?
Deinocheirus. Deinocheirus — the dinosaur that was nothing but a pair of arms for fifty years. The page names its own sources and says which parts of the story were invented, and it is free to read on this site.
What do you build at the back?
The one-pin release: how a rig comes off an animal in about a second, with no tool. Household junk, numbered steps, under thirty minutes, and a number the child writes down at the end.
Is anything in it frightening?
Peril yes, cruelty no. No child dies, there is no swearing and no romance, and nothing anybody builds in these books is meant to hurt anyone - that last one is the first of the three Laws the series runs on.
