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Pixie Dust
Jenny Quinn's life was on course for her advanced physics degree until a lab experiment in vacuum decay turned her life upside down. With her career hopes destroyed and her professor dead in an unexplained fall, she is left with a strange change in her own body. On her own, her childhood infatuation with old comic books may be the only guide to help her solve the twin mysteries of cutting edge physics and the murder of her professor before one or the other puzzle gets her killed.
338 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 2010
17 people want to read
About the author
Henry Melton
60 books13 followersHenry Melton is often on the road with his wife Mary Ann, a nature photographer and frequently captivated by the places he visits. This has inspired his latest series of novels; Small Towns, Big Ideas. Formerly a programmer specializing in database work and web design, he pioneered Internet use for a Fortune 500 company until the tech bubble collapse. In the early days of home computers, he created one of the earliest commercial word processing programs, and built his own computers back when that meant wiring the chips together by hand to his own schematics.
Henry's short fiction has been published in many magazines and anthologies, most frequently in ANALOG. Catacomb, published in DRAGON magazine, is considered a classic, and by the continuing fan mail twenty years later, a formative influence among modern computer gaming programmers. Many of these are available for free on his website.
Other than an occasional short story, most of his time is spent writing science fiction YA novels. Currently being published by Wire Rim Books are the Small Towns, Big Ideas series of books, where high school aged heroes of the here and now are confronted with classic science fiction themes. The first, Emperor Dad, was the winner of the 2008 Darrell Award for Best Novel.
Sharing what he's learned about the art, craft, and business of writing has been an on-going part of his life, from grade school readings to teaching formal classes and veranda coaching for the students of George Benson Christian College in Zambia during his 2007 trip to Africa.
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Henry's short fiction has been published in many magazines and anthologies, most frequently in ANALOG. Catacomb, published in DRAGON magazine, is considered a classic, and by the continuing fan mail twenty years later, a formative influence among modern computer gaming programmers. Many of these are available for free on his website.
Other than an occasional short story, most of his time is spent writing science fiction YA novels. Currently being published by Wire Rim Books are the Small Towns, Big Ideas series of books, where high school aged heroes of the here and now are confronted with classic science fiction themes. The first, Emperor Dad, was the winner of the 2008 Darrell Award for Best Novel.
Sharing what he's learned about the art, craft, and business of writing has been an on-going part of his life, from grade school readings to teaching formal classes and veranda coaching for the students of George Benson Christian College in Zambia during his 2007 trip to Africa.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 23, 2025
Sophomoric, soporific and downright silly!
Jenny Quinn is a young graduate student working towards an advanced degree in experimental physics. But an unfortunate accident in the lab leads to her professor's death in a subsequent fall and infects her body with what she is calling "dark matter". The trouble is that the quantity of dark matter is increasing at an exponential rate and it is causing Jenny to float uncontrollably.
A premise like this might have been interesting if it was approached a little more sensibly and kept under control. But, sadly, PIXIE DUST is little more than a nonsensical collection of cutting edge physics concepts randomly tossed into a blender with no consideration given to common sense or reality - dark matter repels real matter (but somehow the atoms in Jenny Quinn's body manage to maintain their integrity); the quantity of dark matter increases in time with no apparent reason (but somehow Jenny manages to maintain her girlish figure and doesn't weigh any more even when gravity is behaving normally!); magnetic fields applied to the dark matter create a negative gravity field that allows Jenny to float; in the presence of the dark matter, electric current can be used to induce a magnetic field but there is no apparent draw in power (can anyone say perpetual motion?) ... the list of pseudo-scientific babbling is really quite appalling!
Somewhere around page 60, the book, which already held little of my interest, also lost any remaining credibility when Jenny began to search back issues of comic books for ideas to create a super-hero costume. Oh my!
Give me a break, Mr Melton. With so much stellar young adult fiction around, I can't imagine giving this to teenage readers and expecting them to be intelligently entertained any more than I was.
Paul Weiss
Jenny Quinn is a young graduate student working towards an advanced degree in experimental physics. But an unfortunate accident in the lab leads to her professor's death in a subsequent fall and infects her body with what she is calling "dark matter". The trouble is that the quantity of dark matter is increasing at an exponential rate and it is causing Jenny to float uncontrollably.
A premise like this might have been interesting if it was approached a little more sensibly and kept under control. But, sadly, PIXIE DUST is little more than a nonsensical collection of cutting edge physics concepts randomly tossed into a blender with no consideration given to common sense or reality - dark matter repels real matter (but somehow the atoms in Jenny Quinn's body manage to maintain their integrity); the quantity of dark matter increases in time with no apparent reason (but somehow Jenny manages to maintain her girlish figure and doesn't weigh any more even when gravity is behaving normally!); magnetic fields applied to the dark matter create a negative gravity field that allows Jenny to float; in the presence of the dark matter, electric current can be used to induce a magnetic field but there is no apparent draw in power (can anyone say perpetual motion?) ... the list of pseudo-scientific babbling is really quite appalling!
Somewhere around page 60, the book, which already held little of my interest, also lost any remaining credibility when Jenny began to search back issues of comic books for ideas to create a super-hero costume. Oh my!
Give me a break, Mr Melton. With so much stellar young adult fiction around, I can't imagine giving this to teenage readers and expecting them to be intelligently entertained any more than I was.
Paul Weiss
September 19, 2019
Professor Jason Williams and grad student Jenny Quinn conduct an experiment with dark matter. The canister starts floating away, along the the trailer it's strapped to and them. The straps break, they fall, but manage to survive with the help of a parachute. Jase visits a colleague and falls to his death. Jenny wants to get some answers and goes to see him, but on entering the building she is thrown up against the ceiling when his experiment creates a magnetic field. She has been contaminated with dark matter and magnetic fields cause her weight to go negative.
Jen sews together a suit that will create a magnetic field and it allows her to fly. Or at least float. She makes a discovery that she is getting lighter, the amount of dark matter is increasing. It will kill her if she doesn't do something to control it. Then her apartment is vandalized. She has visions of being a guinea pig in a secret lab and decides her best bet is to run away. She joins a carnival and makes some friends. When the business is threatening to go bust she helps with some costume designs and more.
The references to long distance charges, GPS, etc. and no mention of email make me think the setting is 1990s. Now they'd be using burner cell phones rather than custom walkie-talkies.
Young adult. Fun. Quick read (in spite of the eight to ten typos). Entertaining. I like the characters. Jenny interacting with the little kids was really touching. The premise (negative weight matter) was good, when he did with it (flying) was better. 4.5 stars.
Jen sews together a suit that will create a magnetic field and it allows her to fly. Or at least float. She makes a discovery that she is getting lighter, the amount of dark matter is increasing. It will kill her if she doesn't do something to control it. Then her apartment is vandalized. She has visions of being a guinea pig in a secret lab and decides her best bet is to run away. She joins a carnival and makes some friends. When the business is threatening to go bust she helps with some costume designs and more.
The references to long distance charges, GPS, etc. and no mention of email make me think the setting is 1990s. Now they'd be using burner cell phones rather than custom walkie-talkies.
Young adult. Fun. Quick read (in spite of the eight to ten typos). Entertaining. I like the characters. Jenny interacting with the little kids was really touching. The premise (negative weight matter) was good, when he did with it (flying) was better. 4.5 stars.
July 25, 2018
An adventurous look at particle physics from a YA point of view, this book is a fast read that succeeded in fooling me about who the ultimate bad guy would turn out to be. The protagonist was sympathetic, and so were most other characters, though the carnies were given a bit of gloss on some levels. The engineering/scientific approach the protag uses to experiment with her condition and figure out how to cope with it were well-thought out and some of them were outright funny. The dark matter involved, however, did not really fit anything known about the stuff, and amounted on several occasions to handwavium. I did enjoy the Tinkerbell act and the way it was used to conceal the heroine's 'superhuman' abilities.
March 12, 2023
I can't tell you how much I love this author. Pixie Dust turns out to be dark matter which can be any amount of trouble if it is inside you as it is in our heroine. I love her lessons learned (both scientifically and about life) as she navigates her problem. Science Fiction extraordinaire.
April 5, 2011
Decently engaging book, especially for a YA (Young Adult) novel. I'd recommend it for anyone who likes a little Sci-Fi and quick engaging draw.
Unfortunately some odd phrasing or grammatical errors did interrupt the flow a little bit. Having read some of Melton's other novels I'd chalk this up to either a quicker release cycle, or an earlier novel that just didn't get as much clean editing.
Still, I found it more then engaging enough to read through it a day, and keeping myself up about three hours past my normal bed time. Makes me feel like I did back in high school, when I found a book I just wanted to read a little bit more, again and again.
Unfortunately some odd phrasing or grammatical errors did interrupt the flow a little bit. Having read some of Melton's other novels I'd chalk this up to either a quicker release cycle, or an earlier novel that just didn't get as much clean editing.
Still, I found it more then engaging enough to read through it a day, and keeping myself up about three hours past my normal bed time. Makes me feel like I did back in high school, when I found a book I just wanted to read a little bit more, again and again.
December 9, 2012
I enjoyed this book...I've had it since March and finally got around to reading it this past week. It was a page turner once I got into it. The first third had some overly wordy descriptions that annoyed me, but then I became engaged in the complexity and strangeness of the tale that it ended up being a very entertaining read. And when I read a book i want to be entertained! I do wonder about the accuracy of some of the physics aspects as thats an area I'm completely ignorant about. The scientist in me really enjoyed the theory and experiments and of course I'm a comic book junkie so I liked that part. I was grossed out by some of the stuff with the main characters younger brother.
November 17, 2012
Overall this book was decent, but there were a LOT of grammatical errors, missing words, etc. which were very distracting. The book definitely needed to be edited better. If you can get past that though the story was interesting and a good quick read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews