The Pack (review)

In a grim future world where only the privileged few have enough to eat, abandoned children must either scrounge for food on the streets, serve at the pleasure of sadistic warlords, or turn their hands to grueling labor. Bradley and his friends Floris and Victor have been surviving with the aid of a pack of loyal dogs and an old woman who teaches them to beg and steal and nourishes them with her stories. Then Floris is kidnapped, and the boys must journey into the Invisible City—where able-bodied children are harnessed for factory labor—in order to save her. While they lose one faithful dog along the way, they gain a comrade in Martha, who has disguised herself as a boy to ensure her continued usefulness to her warlord and whose hunger for belonging is fed by the close ties in Bradley's mixed pack of canines and humans. This Scottish import's lyrical, evocative writing is harnessed to good effect in the dog/wolf imagery interwoven throughout the narrative, but the book never really sets out the point of the pack's travel once Floris is reunited with them. The backstories of each of the main characters are sometimes compelling but sometimes overexplained, and the toggling back and forth between flashbacks and main plot is sometimes jarring to the point of confusion. However, those who are drawn to bleak futuristic tales—and who have a soft spot for dogs—may find this meandering and haunting adventure worth following.