Brief Synopsis
“Daughter of the Deep” is a 2021 middle-grade science fiction novel by Rick Riordan. After Ana Dakkar’s school is attacked by a rival while she is on a field trip, she and her classmates must fight for survival. But with secrets abound, how is she to know who to trust?
Content Warnings: Intense Action (PG-13), Death (referenced)
What Do I Think?
I’ve said before that I have been a fan of Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson” series since I was a kid, so color me surprised when I found out that he had written a book that was incredibly different. No demigods? No gut-punching humor? Are we sure that this was actually a good idea?
Yes. Yes it was. While the writing style is very much different from his other series, Daughter of the Deep manages to be engaging from page one. Even without mythical gods, the protagonists go on an epic-style quest to stay alive. And while the humor is most certainly different, there is a good balance of it with the darker moments to make for a stronger novel overall.
Ana Dakkar is a fantastic main character: while clever and full of heart, she is also young and makes plenty of mistakes. What defines her is her ability to unite her classmates and push on through terrible obstacles, and she is allowed to feel real, human emotions throughout (instead of acting like an emotionless robot as some protagonists do in similar situations).
At the end of the day, Daughter of the Deep proves to be a fun, wild ride with a phenomenal cast of characters and a story that I hope builds into a fully-fledged series.
Jacob Ryckman 