The story that Rick Riordan tells in Daughter of the Deep is geared toward middle-school aged readers and it is another exciting adventure in the grand style that the author has mastered on his way to becoming one of the most dependable brand names in fiction. It features a cast of students slightly older than the targeted readership engaging in a fast-spaced slightly futuristic adventure that most takes place either above or below the surface of the ocean. Kids that love the author’s Percy Jackson series of adventures will love this initial entry point into what is likely to be a equally big stuff on the big screen, as a Disney theme park attraction, future sequels and all that stuff. Do not worry: if you buy this for a kid in the target age, chances are it will score.
The interesting part is what comes after the kid in question finishes it and either leave a printed version on the back of the coach or the coffee table or by the pool or doesn’t delete the virtual version from the drive in order to make room for more. If by chance you—as either an older teen brother or sister or a fully grown adult parent or guardian—should happen to stumble across either that waylaid paperback or the e-reader of your choice still open to the book, do you take a chance on reading it? Is there anything to be gained by the older teen or adult who decides to take a chance on a book intended for middle schoolers? Well, the first thing that must be taken into consideration is that the average reading level of Americans is situated somewhere between 7th and 8th grade. So, get off your high horse: there is a 50/50 chance that Rick Riordan is writing for you. But if you are confident you are situated somewhere to the north of the levee here, there is also good news: Rick Riordan also wrote a book you can enjoy on a much higher level of literacy.
Here’s the deal with Daughter of the Deep. It would not exist had a French writer named Jules Verne not set his quill to paper in the second half of the 1800’s to create the character of Captain Nemo, his fantastical submarine the Nautilus, and a story of traveling Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The protagonist of Riordan’s novel is a brilliant young woman named Ana Dakkar. As it so happens, there is a character in Verne’s novel known as Prince Dakkar and eventually Ana discovers that she is a descendent of this person. So, basically the conceit of the novel (the premise without which it could not be conceived) is that not only did Prince Dakkar actually exist, but so did all the characters in Verne’s novel. Important to understand is that the novel exists in the Riordan’s book. It is not as if Ana and the others commence from a point of origination in which Jules Verne did not live and did not write his novel. In fact, so elevated is the novel and Verne himself that part of the school at the center of this novel is named in his honor. So, here’s the deal: Jules Verne’s adventure novel with the ridiculously long title exist both as we know it—a total fiction—and also as the story of real-life people who actually existed. They are therefore both fictional and historical; both unreal and real.
And that is why the novel can be considered an example of postmodern meta-fiction. Which, it must be admitted, is sort of Riordan’s stock in trade, what with all those mythical figures from ancient times actually being real in his books. Myth and reality collide in the works of Riordan in playful ways written in plain language that makes them immediately unsuitable for serious analysis. Which, when you strip away the fact that his books are targeted toward half the readership in America is absolutely, completely wrong. So if you are an average American adult, take this opportunity to get in ahead of the other 50% that is reading at a much more elevated level. Eventually, they will come to realize that Riordan has been writing postmodern meta-fiction all this time and they bothered to take him seriously. Riordan is in much the same position that Stephen King was during the early 1980s. Only time will tell if Daughter of the Deep was his Shawshank Redemption.
