Daughter of the Deep is a middle grade fantasy-adventure novel by Rick Riordan. The book was published on October 26, 2021, by Disney-Hyperion. The book is a New York Times best seller. 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 be taken on a top secret weekend trial at sea. The book was inspired by Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas.
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 remote bluff on the southern California coast.
The book opens on a Friday morning just before the end of Ana's freshman year, when she goes for a swim near campus with her older brother Dev, a 17-year-old senior, who gives her their mother's pearl necklace as an early present for her fifteenth birthday. Ana and the 19 other ninth-graders at Harding-Pencroft then head to the docks at the nearby fictional city of San Alejandro for their end-of-year trials on board the school yacht the Varuna (named for Varuna, the Hindu god of the sea), which will determine their future at the school. The trials are 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. Hewett, after launching drones to survey the wreckage, orders the freshmen back onto the bus, then onto the Varuna and out to sea, telling them that this is the work of a rival school, Land Institute, and that it is better for their own safety if the world believes them dead as well. He directs one of the boys, Gemini Twain, to act as Ana's bodyguard. Hewitt and the students then find themselves fighting off a commando raid at sea by Land Institute seniors who attempt to kidnap Ana; the abduction is foiled with the aid of a friendly bottlenose dolphin Ana named Socrates, who knocks her would-be abductor, Caleb South, out of the water. When interrogated, Caleb proudly admits that he and his classmates destroyed Harding-Pencroft and says that they were protecting the legacy of an outlaw and selfishly hoarding technology that could greatly benefit the world. Hewett has him thrown overboard in his flotation vest (which had pink ducky wings) and wet suit to join his classmates who have been set adrift in a pontoon with their hands bound.
Hewett explains to Ana and her classmates that Jules Verne's novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas and The Mysterious Island are actually 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 then, and their rivalry has now erupted into actual warfare. In Nemo's submarine the Nautilus, he waged a guerrilla war on 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.