[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dust_city_6288.jpg]]

->''"When your dad is the wolf who '''killed''' Little Red Riding Hood life is no fairytale."''
-->-- From the back cover

''Dust City'' is a teen UrbanFantasy novel written by Robert Paul Weston set in an AlternateUniverse that runs on Grimm's Fairy Tales. It is told from the viewpoint of an anthropomorphic wolf named Henry Whelp, who starts the book in [[MeaningfulName St. Remus]], a juvenile detention center mostly for [[TalkingAnimal animalia]]. When he was a cub, [[TheMagicGoesAway all the fairies vanished]] from [[{{Utopia}} Eden]], and the richest hominids moved into Eden. By the time of the main story, magic has been ineffectively replaced with "leftover miracles", aka fairy dust. The plot is kicked off when Henry's roommate and best friend, the human thief Jack, steals a file from the visiting psychiatrist's office. It's Henry's father's file, and contains clues to a [[GovernmentConspiracy conspiracy]]. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that George William Whelp killed Little Red Riding Hood, and in this verse, it ends more or less how it would in [[RealLife Real Life]] - with a long stay in prison, and his son disowning him. Of course, Jack picks that day to have his elven girlfriend Siobhan bust him out of juvie, taking the file with him. Then the Doc commits suicide, [[SarcasmMode coincidentally]] right after the file was stolen. Henry uses Doc's funeral as an opportunity to escape, aided by [[TheBully Roy]] [[{{Jerkass}} Sarlat's]] sister, who happened to be visiting her father's grave that day. They part ways, and Henry goes off to Elventown to get the file from Jack. Then the crud really hits the fan.

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!!Tropes:
* ActionGirl: [[CowboyCop Detective White]], and Fiona.
* AnimalStereotypes: [[SavageWolves Wolves are big and scary]], [[CunningLikeAFox foxes are sneaky]], [[CleverCrows ravens are tricky]], CatsAreMean, hedgehogs are prickly, and mules are background characters.
* AntiHero: Henry, mainly because he's a pessimist and he's been forced to take tainted [[FantasticDrug fairy dust]] a few times, which [[spoiler: inevitably makes him go violently berserk]].
* TheAtoner: [[spoiler: George William Whelp killed a little girl and her grandmother under the influence of tainted [[FantasticDrug fairydust]]. As he isn't willfully evil, he is driven to somehow find the source of the tainted fairy dust, and winds up getting [[DrivenToSuicide Doc]], [[TakenForGranite Jack]], and his son Henry involved in his [[ProperlyParanoid delusions]].]]
* [[ArcWords Arc Word]]: Deadwood.
* [[BadCopIncompetentCop Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop]]: Most of the police is like this.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Mr. Whelp gets a reduced jail sentence, all the main characters survived, Henry got the girl... life is good. On the other hand, there is now a way to regress [[TalkingAnimal animalia]] into ordinary animals with no antidote. [[FinalSolution And all the fairies are dead,]] though ever-optimistic Henry thinks there might be a way to find more, beyond the City limits.]]
* [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin Can't Get Away With Nuthin']]: Henry is in juvie because he broke a window.
* [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Gun]]: Jerry's markings, and [[FairyGodmother Faelynn's]] blue rings.
* CrapsackWorld: See above. And see below.
* OurFairiesAreDifferent: They're fluttery WingedHumanoid {{Reality Warper}}s. [[spoiler: After a fairy dies and is buried, a deadwood tree grows from its corpse]].
* FantasticDrug: Synthetic fairy dust is smuggled and sold like real-life drugs, creates a high, and is addictive.
* FantasticRacism: Hominids (humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, and nixies) vs. [[TalkingAnimal animalia]] (wolves, ravens, foxes, hedgehogs, cats, pigs, mules and so on).
* {{Grimmification}}: [[WordOfGod The author]] states in the [[AllThereInTheManual Notes and Acknowledgements]] that ''Dust City'' was inspired by a textbook called ''The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales'' by Maria Tatar.
* [[{{Hustler}} The Hustler]]: [[OneSceneWonder Jerry]], a fox with [[ChekhovsGun distinctive markings]].
* [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Jerk With a Heart of Gold]]: [[TheBully Roy]] really does love his mom and his big sister Fiona. The blue letter he got in a fight over at the beginning of the book is revealed to say: "DER SIS, THANK YOO FOR TECHING ME REEDING. I LUV YOO, ROY". He seems to have made a genuine [[HeelFaceTurn Heel Face Turn]] at the end, [[MindScrew possibly]] because of a vision of Henry's [[spoiler: dead]] Fairy Godmother.
* [[TheMagicGoesAway The Magic Went Away]]: All the fairies disappeared years ago.
* MegaCorp: Nimbus Pharmaceuticals. They don't make everything, but they're the only [[SarcasmMode legitimate]] vendor of fairy dust in the City.
* MindScrew: [[spoiler: Henry and Roy both have visions of sparkly fluttery Faelynn years after she died. Henry might just have had a flashback from getting beat up, but he also saw patterns of fairy bones on the ground before [[TheReveal The Reveal]]. Roy had never seen a fairy before in his life, but he was in the hospital on a lot of fairy dust after being seriously injured by a [[BrainwashedAndCrazy high on bad fairy dust]] Henry. The fairies all died years ago, but somehow deadwood trees grew from their corpses. Are they really gone for good?]]
* NoOntologicalInertia: [[Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}} Skinner]] [[TakenForGranite turned Jack into gold.]] After [[EnemyCivilWar his partners]] [[LudicrousGibs kill him]], Jack turns back to normal, apparently unharmed.
* PoweredByAForsakenChild: [[spoiler: The strongest fairy dust is made of ground-up fairy bones]].
* TheReveal: See PoweredByAForsakenChild above.
* UrbanFantasy: The setting is best described as Grimm's fairy tales in a modern city.
* WretchedHive: The titular City, tending towards a ViceCity.
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