Jack crash-landed on a planet where the natives are seven-foot-tall carnivorous cat-lizards currently somewhere between stone and bronze age. The good news is the natives think the ship that crashed into their mountain is a dragon and are steering clear of it. The bad news is they just left one of their own as a sacrifice to appease the beast. No matter what Jack and his AI co-pilot decide, his life just got a lot more complicated...

ATTENTION: Before you read further there are a couple of things you should know about this story. First: This is a bit of a slow burn. While action, adventure, and romance are all important to this story, they are not the focus of it, the characters and their development are. Every character is intentionally introduced with deep flaws that they have to overcome, turn into strengths, or learn to accept as they grow into their own version of a complete individual. Not all of them will start out or end up likable, though I do try and maintain an upbeat tone throughout the story. All that being said, for those of you who do read this story, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Second: this is soft sci-fi rather than hard sci-fi, hence why I chose that tag. For those of you unfamiliar with the distinction, here's what Wikipedia had to say.

1. It explores the "soft" sciences, and especially the social sciences (for example, anthropology, sociology, or psychology), rather than engineering or the "hard" sciences (for example, physics, astronomy, or chemistry).

2. It is not scientifically accurate or plausible; the opposite of hard science fiction.

Soft science fiction of either type is often more concerned with character and speculative societies, rather than speculative science or engineering. The term first appeared in the late 1970s and is attributed to Australian literary scholar Peter Nicholls.