With a teenager in the house for the first time in years, I am catching up on some young adult reading so we can talk about the books over the dinner table. Rick Riordan has been a long-term favorite in this household, so we were glad to discover a new-to-us book, Daughter of the Deep, set in the world of Jules Verne and Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the Sea. This is a standalone novel, so it was nice to not commit to reading a series. I loved that it had a strong female protagonist, fifteen-year-old Ana Dakar, the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Captain Nemo. She is a freshman at an advanced school, the Harding-Pencroft Academy, which trains people in everything related to the sea: marine warfare, veterinary medicine, etc. She and her brother, Dev, were orphaned two years earlier. When, in a devastating attack by a a rival school, Dev is killed and her school is destroyed, Ana is forced to grow up quickly. She is the sole link left to the hidden island retreat of Captain Nemo, and she takes over his submarine, Nautilus, and leads it against her enemy school—and the person at her own school who betrayed them.
This is a fun romp blending modern with historical times but without the mythology present in other Riordan books (though you could admit to the mythology of Jules Verne should you choose), so it’s a bit of a breath of fresh air if you’ve read other Riordan works. Though it is a standalone, there is certainly room for sequels.
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Daughter of the Deep (Disney Hyperion, October 26, 2021) is available through:
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You can read my reviews of other Rick Riordan young adult books here:
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