astute and even rather obtuse readers of neal stephenson's "The Diamond Age" and philip pullman's "The Golden Compass"/"His Dark Materials" series will notice that they share some similarities, namely: a bold and intelligent young girl, is given an omniscient magical artifact, which only she can read. this artifact communicates primarily in symbols, and points/leads our precocious heroine into a parallel universe, which is almost, but not entirely unlike her own quaint victorian english yet also somehow futuristic world. the scientist/inventor father figure who is inadvertently behind all this manages to stay far out of the way during her adventures she is generally abused and neglected by her mother, runs away from home, and manages to meet a new, kinder, gentler motherly figure, who becomes entwined with our heroine's fate in supposedly epic ways a crude quiet young man to escort the lass, who often attempts to defend her by employing underwhelming physical violence some friendly cowboy who manages to get into a gunfight, against all odds the sky is filled with magic irridescent dust, which and can be seen with special glasses, or by eye under the right circumstances. the dust not only drives all the magic artifacts, but it also happens to drive the plot talking pseudo-animals that embody personality traits of the girl a knife that can cut through anything is acquired some crap about shamanism made by possible by technology dirigibles, lots of them