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weaselweader's review
1.0
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
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