Daughter of the Deep

Daughter of the Deep

The cover of the U.S. edition
Author	Rick Riordan
Cover artist	Lavanya Naidu
Country	United States
Genre	Fantasy, science fiction, young-adult novel
Published	October 5, 2021
Publisher	Disney Press[1]
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback), audiobook, e-book
Pages	416[1]
ISBN	978-0241-5381-66

Daughter of the Deep is a middle grade fantasy-adventure novel by Rick Riordan.^[2] The book was published on October 26, 2021, by Disney-Hyperion. The book is a New York Times best seller.^[3] Unlike Riordan's earlier books which dealt with mythology, Daughter of the Deep is a Retrofuturism science fiction novel set in a contemporary timeline of the world of Jules Verne's books Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and The Mysterious Island. This is a derivative work, featuring machinery, tools and settings described in Verne's books, and characters who are descendants of Verne's characters. It combines both old and future technologies, melding together elements of both steampunk and artificial intelligence. The book incorporates the tropes of sibling rivalry and the recovery of lost ancient technologies. For example, Nemo's Nautilus – now under the control of his descendants – is described as having artificial intelligence and being capable of travel via supercavitation.

The book follows Ana Dakkar, who is a student at Harding-Pencroft Academy. She learns that at the end of her freshman year, her class will taken on a top secret weekend trial at sea.^[4] The book was inspired by Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas.^[5]

Plot[]

Ana Dakkar, the novel's protagonist and narrator, who turns 15 during the novel, is a student at Harding-Pencroft Academy, a fictional five-year boarding high school for marine sciences, situated on a bluff on the California coast. Her older brother Dev, a 17-year-old senior, gives her their mother's pearl necklace as an early present for her fifteenth birthday. Near the end of her freshman year, Ana and the 19 other ninth-graders at Harding-Pencroft head to the docks at the nearby fictional city of San Alejandro for end-of-year trials onboard the school yacht the Varuna (named for Varuna, the Hindu god of the sea), which will determine their future at the school, supervised by Dr. Theodosius Hewett, their elderly Theoretical Marine Science teacher. However, shortly after leaving the campus, Ana and her classmates see torpedoes fired from a submarine at the base of the bluff on which their school sits, collapsing the buildings into the ocean. Dr. Hewitt orders the freshmen onto the Varuna and out to sea, telling them that this is the work of a rival school, Land Institute. He directs one of the boys, Gemini Twain, to act as Ana's bodyguard. Hewitt and the students then fight off a raid at sea by Land Institute seniors who attempt to abduct Ana, with the aid of a friendly bottlenose dolphin Ana has named Socrates.

Hewett explains that Jules Verne's novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas and The Mysterious Island are somewhat fictionalized accounts of real events based on interviews Verne conducted with real people involved in these events, and that Ana is descended from Captain Nemo (Prince Dakkar of Bundelkhand). Hewett tells them that Nemo was a genius who developed technology far ahead of his time and Harding-Pencroft Academy and Land Institute have been battling over this technology ever since, and their rivalry has now erupted into actual warfare. In Nemo's submarine the Nautilus, he waged war on the shipping trade of the colonial powers of the late 19th century, seeking their destruction as vengeance for the murder of his wife and eldest son by the British following his participation in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against British rule.

After Pierre Aronnax, Ned Land, and Aronnax's servant Conseil escaped Captain Nemo, they founded Land Institute in an attempt to save the world order from Nemo. Cyrus Harding and Bonaventure Pencroft, whose encounter with Nemo was described in The Mysterious Island, told their story to Verne in an attempt to change Nemo's image and to protect his legacy, and founded Harding-Pencroft Academy in accordance with Nemo's last wish – that his inventions not be misused for greed and power by the world's governments and corporations or by Land Institute.

The freshman trials were intended to be the ninth-graders' introduction to Nemo's technology, but Hewett feels that under the circumstances he must now tell them everything. Ana's friend and classmate Ester Harding, an orphan who is Cyrus Harding's fourth great-granddaughter, had been given the information months before, but was sworn to secrecy by the Harding-Pencroft Academy board of trustees, under penalty of disinheritance. Long before the development of modern genetic science, Captain Nemo had learned how to biometrically link his greatest inventions to his own genes so that they might only be operated by himself or his direct descendants, which means that only Ana, who is Captain Nemo's fourth great-granddaughter and (it is believed) last surviving direct descendant, may now operate them.

Unbeknownst to the students, Hewett is suffering from type 2 diabetes and advanced pancreatic cancer, and he becomes comatose. Ana takes command of the Varuna and uses one of Nemo's inventions to determine their destination, a remote, uncharted Pacific atoll named Lincoln Island, where Cyrus Harding, Bonaventure Pencroft, and their companions were marooned and where Captain Nemo died aboard the Nautilus. Along the way, they learn from drones Hewett launched after the school's destruction that Dev had broadcast a warning over its public-address system to evacuate. In order to approach Lincoln Island, which is heavily defended and concealed from detection by a cloaking device, they must decipher a code transmitted to them by Lincoln Island staff and send back a similarly coded message.

Upon their arrival at Lincoln Island, they are greeted by the island's caretakers: a couple named Luca Barsanti (who is descended from the Italian inventor Eugenio Barsanti) and his wife Ophelia Artemesia, and Jupiter, an orangutan who has learned to cook by watching The Great British Bake Off (and quite well, the students discover). Dr. Hewett begins to receive treatment with Captain Nemo's medical technology. Luca and Ophelia introduce the students to the Nautilus, which, save for some relatively minor internal water damage, is almost intact, after sitting dormant at the bottom of a nearby lagoon for approximately 150 years after Captain Nemo died in the command chair. Ana learns that the Nautilus is a specimen of artificial intelligence so advanced as to be sentient, and that her parents, who died shortly before she entered eighth grade, discovered the Nautilus and were electrocuted in a rash attempt to board it. Ana successfully boards the Nautilus by introducing herself and asking for permission to come aboard, speaking in her and Captain Nemo's ancestral language of Bundeli. She then awakens the ship's advanced functions by playing a pipe organ Captain Nemo had installed on the bridge.

Ana and her classmates' exploration of the Nautilus is suddenly interrupted, however, by the discovery that the Land Institute seniors who attacked their school have followed them to Lincoln Island in their submarine the Aronnax, and a battle ensues. During the battle, Ana and the others discover to their horror that her brother Dev has turned traitor and is collaborating with Land Institute, and is commanding the Aronnax, from which he had broadcast the warning to evacuate after Harding-Pencroft Academy's defenses had been hacked and brought down. The battle ends with the Aronnax broken to pieces by a giant octopus, its crew plucked from the ocean and locked up in improvised jail cells, and a brawl between Ana and Dev which ends with her knocking him unconscious by shooting him with rubber bullets.

The novel ends with the Harding-Pencroft ninth-graders, Luca and Ophelia, and a recovering Dr. Hewett vowing to rebuild the school. Ana takes Dev, who has forfeited practically everything, to see their parents' final resting place in the lagoon near the Nautilus.^[6]

Reception[]

Daughter of the Deep is a New York Times and IndieBound best seller.^[3]

The book received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews,^[3] as well as a positive review from Publishers Weekly.^[7] It received a mixed review from School Library Journal.^[8]

In 2021, the book received the Goodreads Choice Award for Middle Grade & Children's books.^[9]

Film adaptation[]

Riordan confirmed on March 7, 2021, that Daughter of the Deep was "crafted with screenwriting structure and development". He also said that there are talks of a possible future feature film adaptation for the book.^[10] He reaffirmed the plans for a film on October 24, 2021, whilst confirming that he would be co-writing the film with Aditi Brennan Kapil.^[11]

References[]