The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King

The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King

 

This book wasn’t what I expected, but it’s good, nonetheless.

 

Basically, it’s about the famed teenaged pirate Emer Morrisey who was cursed to be reborn a hundred times as a dog before returning to a human body.

 

Three hundred years pass by and finally she’s human again, and with all her memories intact. Now she wants to search for the treasure she buried 300 years ago before she died as a pirate.

 

I expected something more exciting and dramatic, with a lot of fighting scenes and adventure. This book was a little bit more laid-back and slow-moving, but it made up for it in depth.

 

It’s a book with a really interesting premise, and that’s what caught my attention. I guess I expected it to be one of those adventure stories, but in a way, it read more like literary fiction, in the vein of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones.

 

This is a well-written book with a good storyline, but I was slightly disappointed because I expected something else. Perhaps the problem lies with the marketing of the book, perhaps it shouldn’t be categorized as a YA book, or perhaps King should make Emer something other than a pirate.

 

There wasn’t much of a pirate feel to the story, in my opinion, and I think the story could work just as well if the pirate angle was substituted for something else.