Dust Girl: The American Fairy Trilogy Book 1 [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

I got an eGalley of this book to review through NetGalley(dot)com. I was really excited to read this book, I love fairy tales and was curious to read about a fairy tale in a 1930's American setting. The book ended up being very underwhelming; the story was simple, not all that engaging, and just overall mediocre.

Callie lives with her mother in Kansas and spends most of the time fighting against the continuous drought and frequent dust-storms that have made her sick. When her mother disappears in a sandstorm Callie is left to fend for herself and discovers that she is not exactly human. She will have to journey to California with a hobo boy named Jack if she is ever going to save her mother.

I will be blunt...I didn't like this book much...I didn't hate it, but I wasn't all that engaged in it either. I thought everything about it was a bit washed out (like the cover). The landscape and setting were kind of blah, Callie and Jack were kind of boring, and the journey they take was similar. That being said is wasn't poorly written, I just didn't find it to be an exciting read.

Callie kind of goes with the flow for most of the book; she accepts the fact that she's half fairy pretty readily. She has occasional moments of strength, but for the most part she was like every other YA heroine you've ever read about. She fancies Jack and is determined to find her mom. She makes many of the same mistakes (trusting strangers who say they know her) over and over again.

Jack was okay too, but nothing special. He is kind of your bad boy thief type and goes along with the adventure to get a good story. He also makes a lot of mistakes and never comes off as a real strong or noble hero.

The setting was an interesting one for a fairy tale, it is a creative idea. It didn't really work for me though. The 1930's dust bowl as a backdrop of a fairy tale? Sounds kind of neat. But the scenes were never really described in a way that made them come alive for me; everything just seemed washed out.

I also enjoyed how Callie used music to call magic. Unfortunately the magic system wasn't well defined and the rules to how Callie could use her magic were inconsistent. I like my magic with some consistency (I know probably sounds a bit silly).

My favorite part of the book was when they went to the Fairyland amusement park. I loved the irony in this part of the story and how different parts of fairy tales were blended in with something like an amusement park. If the whole story had been more like the end, this could have been a great read.

Overall it was an okay read. It is a quick read and is decently written. Everything about the story was mediocre; although the 1930's is an interesting setting. I personally wouldn't recommend reading this book if you like fairy tales; there wasn't as much fairy tale to this story as there was adventuring through the 1930's. So if you are interested in American Historical Fantasy this might interest you, unfortunately there isn't a lot to the story...it's pretty simple. I won't be reading any more of this series.

DUST GIRL impressively combines historical and fantasy elements. It's set in Kansas during the Dust Bowl, five years into the drought that's killed crops and forced established families to abandon their homes and seek better fortune elsewhere. Slow Run, where our heroine Callie was born and raised, has slowly turned from an agricultural center into a ghost town.

That's not all, of course. Callie's mother is a little crazy. Callie herself is dying of dust pneumonia, her lungs filling up with dirt that's slowly suffocating her. And she's a mixed-race child, with a white mother and a black father, during Segregation.

If you read the book blurb, you know this is a fairy story. That Callie's absent father is a fairy prince, making Callie a fairy princess. You might think that the fantasy elements would offer an escape from the grim, dry reality of the Kansas Dust Bowl. This is a middle-grade paranormal, after all - surely there will be iridescent wings and silk gowns and marble fountains somewhere along the line? But, no, Sarah Zettel defies expectations.

There's magic aplenty in DUST GIRL, but all of it is themed. Zettel takes up fairy lore that we all know (the Seelie/Unseelie court, the deadly potency of iron, etc.) and wraps it up with issues like race relations and poverty. For example: the "Unseelie" fairies are dark-skinned, making Callie appear to be mixed race, and one of the court's primary sources of magic is jazz music. DUST GIRL is, bizarrely, a fairy story that refuses to indulge even the smallest escapist tendency. All of the fantastical elements lead the reader deeper into the history.

My biggest problem with the book was Callie. I had no idea how old she was. The book is narrated from her point of view and sometimes her vocabulary would be very sophisticated but at others very simple. Sometimes her understanding of the world felt childlike, at other times more adult. She could have been anywhere from eight to fifteen, and I was never sure. I couldn't get a really solid bead on her personality, either. Sometimes she was meek and obedient. Sometimes she had gumption. I was never sure what sparked one side of her character to come out over the other and she ended up just plain not making any sense to me.

I think a lot of people are going to love this book. The worldbuilding is a feat in itself. I do recommend it to anyone who's thrilled at the prospect of a non-escapist book about a fairy princess. Personally, however...because the heroine never grabbed my heart, the book itself didn't either. I was impressed, but I didn't fall in love.

Dust Girl (2012) is the first Fantasy novel in the American Fairy Trilogy. It is set in Kansas about five years after the dust started covering the farmlands. Now the dust storms are wild and heavy enough to blow away sheds and cover buildings up to the second floor.

In this novel, Calliope LeRoux is a teenager living in a hotel within Slow Run, Kansas. Her mother owns the hotel, but they haven't had any paying guests in a while. The other families in Slow Run are leaving, but her mother insists on waiting for her father Daniel LeRoux. Callie is beginning to hear voices in her head.

Baya is an old Indian man. Sometimes he seems to have a tail.

Jacob Hollander is a teenage hobo. Jack comes from a bootlegging family. He is fleeing feelings of guilt over the death of his sister Hannah.

Samuel Morgan is a railroad detective. Bull clears out hobos and bums in the train yards within Constantine, Kansas.

Shiraz is a half-breed of the Midnight People. Shimmy is staying in Constantine.

Shake is a full-blooded Midnighter. He is staying with Shimmy in Constantine.

In this story, Callie and her mother are having breakfast when the town doctor comes to say goodbye. He also checks the dust pneumonia in her lungs. Callie pleads for him to take her with his family, but the car is already full.

Her mother isn't in the kitchen when she returns from her futile attempt to flee. Callie finds her in the Moonlight Room begging for her man to return. Callie thinks that it has been thirteen years, so he should have returned by now. Then Mama gets Callie to help remove the dust covers from the piano and tells her to play.

Callie has never played the piano before, but her hands know what to do. She plays her anger and fear and the voices hear her. Her mother slaps her to get her attention.

When Callie stops playing, they look out the window and see the dust storm. It is the largest storm they have ever seen. Her mother runs outside crying her man's name.

The dust storm has cut off the sun, so Callie grabs a rope and ties it to the kitchen doorknob. She ties the other end around her waist and goes out into the storm calling her mother. She sees a shape in the dust and goes toward it.

The shape isn't her mother, but an old man. After they return to the hotel, Callie gives him water and lets him rest. She falls asleep on the couch.

When she awakes, the old man is still there. He asks for her name and tells her to call him Baya. He says some indian words with his hand on her head and she falls asleep once more.

When she awakes again, Baya is gone and so is her dust pneumonia. Then a car horn sounds outside and she sees a Duesenberg parked in front of the hotel. She goes out and finds a wealthy family wanting a hotel room for the night.

This tale puts Callie into a very risky situation. She meets Jack in the city jail and gets him to help with the new guests. But the guests turn out to be something other than they appear to be.

This story has chapter titles from Depression era songs and lists a few that inspired the author. It also has notes on other sources about the Dust Bowl and the Depression. The tale is a quick and easy read with some interesting action.

Later, Callie has a run-in with Bull and meets Shimmy and Shake. The next installment in this sequence is Golden Girl.

Highly recommended for Zettel fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of the Dust Bowl, fairy magic, and a touch of romance. Read and enjoy!

-Arthur W. Jordin