Riordan Retrospective: The Sun and The Star

Welcome once again to my Riordan Retrospective. For those of you just joining the fun, this is my look back at the works of Rick Riordan. That means Percy Jackson, its sequels, and spin-offs. This is less of a formal review and more of a relaxed look back.

Last time, we took a look back at Daughter of the Deep. Rick Riordan’s first science fiction novel, and one based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This time, we’re returning to the Riordanverse for a standalone adventure with Nico and Will. We’re taking a look at The Sun and The Star. 

Nico di Angelo is the brooding son of Hades. Will Solace is a son of Apollo with a generally sunny disposition. Together, they are a gay couple at Camp Half-Blood. Through the power of plot convenience, literally every other camper has left camp at the end of summer. What about all those campers who don’t have families to go home to? There must be quite a few of them, right? Uh…hey, now Nico and Will don’t have to worry about people walking in on their cuddle time! Well, except for Chiron and Dionysus, because plot convenience can’t fix everything. And you know what else plot convenience can’t fix? The fact that Bob the Titan, aka Iapetus, is stuck in Tartarus. Quest time! Percy and Annabeth really should be involved, or at least Hazel and Reyna. But hey, can’t be having any icky straight people raining on our yaoi parade, am I right? Nico and Will are going to talk about their feels, retread old ground, lose their previous character development, and, uh…oh, right, they need to get Bob out of Tartarus. Well, anyway, prepare for the beloved world of Rick Riordan to almost literally go to hell in a handbasket. Mark Oshiro’s narcissism and ego are about to take us for a wild ride with two boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, and furthermore, boyfriend.

Usually, I try to objectively summarize the novels we’re looking back at. Unless, of course, Rick Riordan really shit the bed. Though, even then, the only time I felt the need to do so was with The Hammer of Thor. That was a unique blend of bad. Not that The Ship of the Dead was much better. But I guess we’ll have to reset the clock. The Sun and The Star is the worst Riordanverse book since Magnus Chase, and that’s really saying something!

Now, I tried to keep an open-mind going into this book. I was hoping that it would subvert my expectations. And indeed it did…by being infinitely worse than I could possibly imagine. I mean, when the opening scene has the characters playing a G-Rated version of Fuck, Marry, Kill: Star Wars Edition, well, it’s only going to go downhill from there. Everything about that opening scene, from the dialogue, the characterization, and the general set-up, feel like something you’d find in a poorly written fanfiction. Then again, that’s basically what this book is.

So, just who is the co-author of this book? Mark Oshiro is a gay, non-binary, Hispanic who uses they/them pronouns. They used to run a blog where they would review various works of media, usually of the nerd/geek persuasion. Almost invariably, Mark would find some way to talk about either being gay, having had a traumatic childhood, or being a gay person with trauma. If your sexuality is the most interesting thing about you, then you need to seriously broaden your horizons.

Anyway, Mark got popular with a certain clique of speculative fiction writers. The type whose idea of political activism is going on angry Twitter rants, and then blocking anyone who disagrees with them. Very few of said writers actually have the talent to back-up their delusions of eloquence. They loved how Mark parroted their views back at them, and stroked their egos. So, through the power of nepotism, Mark became the It Boy. This was back when Mark still identified as male. Naturally, Rick Riordan was among this throng of clapping seals. We must assume that Rick looked at Mark and said, “My darling! Where have you been all my life?” 

It is painfully obvious that Rick let Mark have almost complete free-reign of The Sun and The Star, and only did the bare minimum of editing. This probably explains the scene where Nico claims that Bianca is his mother, when she’s actually his sister. Really confirms my suspicion that Rick has gotten so big that he’s basically immune to editors at this point. I wonder if that’s part of why Percy Jackson and the Olympians turned out as well as it did. Maybe the editors reigned-in Rick’s excess. Well, that and he had his sons to call him out, and was actually taking his time with crafting the books. Honestly, it was probably a lot of things.

Even at his worst, Rick Riordan books have a certain feel to them. You can always tell that you’re reading a Rick Riordan novel. I don’t get that feeling with The Sun and The Star. I’ve never read any of Mark Oshiro’s other novels, nor do I have any plans to. However, I get the impression that the general feeling and tone would be akin to The Sun and The Star. At times, I had to remind myself I was reading an actual, officially published novel, and not just a poorly written fanfiction.

Now, I want to take a moment and address something. People often use the term fanfiction as shorthand for poor writing. And to be fair, about ninety percent of fanfiction isn’t all that good. I’ve certainly written my fair share of less than stellar fanfics. However, the other ten percent is genuinely quite good. That’s why I’m trying to specify bad fanfiction in this review. Being fanfiction doesn’t make something automatically bad in and of itself. A lot of fanfiction writers just don’t have the same intimate knowledge of the characters that the author does. And you have to factor in all the fanfic writers who are just kids trying to seriously write for the first time. And, of course, there are the zealous shippers, the High School AU writers, the fetish writers, and all the other seedier groups who give fanfiction a bad reputation. But even with all of that, there’s still that ten percent, and it is so worth it to find the diamonds in the rough of the fanfiction world.

Mark Oshiro, however, is most decidedly not part of that glorious ten percent. Many people have noted that Nico felt incredibly off in The Sun and The Star, and I think I know why. Put simply, Nico isn’t being written as Nico di Angelo. He’s being written as Mark Oshiro’s self-insert. Think about it. Mark has pretty much no personality beyond being gay and having experienced trauma. Nico is gay, and he has experienced quite a bit of trauma. So, it isn’t unreasonable to assume Mark felt a kindred spirit in Nico. Unfortunately, Mark grafted their experience onto Nico, and basically turned him into a self-insert of Mark. I’d argue that the same thing happened to Will as well, just in a slightly different way. Will got the chipper manchild side of Mark’s personality, whereas Nico got all the depressed parts. Mark’s depiction of Will can also potentially be read as Mark’s idea of an idealized boyfriend.

Oh yeah, did I mention that Mark just loves the word boyfriend? It appears, at absolute minimum, at least 120 times through The Sun and The Star, according to my rough guesstimation. It gets very grating very quickly. We get it Mark, they’re gay, and they’re in love! You don’t have to remind us every gods damn paragraph! If I was a teacher, I would have docked Mark several points for repetition, and told them to use a damn thesaurus already. I’d also dock Rick several points for buming all the work off to Mark, and for not pulling his own weight in this group project.

I stand by the fact that, prior to The Sun and The Star, Nico was one of the best LGBTQ characters in the Riordanverse. He’s gay, but that isn’t the be all and end all of him. There is way more to his personality than just his sexuality. Unfortunately, Mark Oshiro and Rick Riordan don’t seem to care for silly things like nuance and character development. If anything, Nico has seriously regressed in this book. Back in The Trials of Apollo, Nico was finally taking steps to leave his past behind him, and he was actually starting to become happy. Apparently, Mark and Rick subscribe to the Joss Whedon School of Character Writing. Basically, when in doubt, just make your characters as miserable as possible, and claim it makes them more interesting that way. Needless to say, this thinking is a load of Minotaur dung. Conflict is the driver of stories, yes. However, conflict is not the same as misery. There are ways to create conflict without putting your characters through the wringer. It is the mark of a poor writer who confuses misery with conflict.

I know a lot of people felt Will Solace wasn’t the best choice to be Nico’s love interest. I concede it was a bit random, but I was willing to overlook that for several reasons. First, it was nice to see Nico actually catch a break for once. I also adored how Will called Nico out on his bullshit. The part in The Blood of Olympus where Will tells Nico to stop wallowing in self-pity was the stuff of legends. Oh, but don’t expect to see any of that here. In fact, a big part of Will’s character arc, and I use the term loosely, is learning that it is okay for Nico to be dark. What does that mean? The heck if I know! Mark Oshiro is big on using flowery words and sentences that don’t actually mean anything if you stop to think about them. Best I can figure is that Nico should be allowed to be a perpetually mopey Gloomy Gus because he’s been twisted into Mark Oshiro’s self-insert. Actual self-improvement is like kryptonite to people like Mark.

Speaking of Nico being Mark’s self-insert, let’s talk about Nico’s coming out party. Oh yes, Nico tried to go on a picnic with Will, but the satyrs and dryads misunderstood, and threw a picnic themed coming out party. He even got to wear a flower crown, just like Mark Orshio loves to wear. And then Nico decided to come out to the whole camp in a truly Stunning and Brave way. But wait, there’s more! Nico became a true gay icon. Nay, he became the Homosexual Jesus of Camp Half-Blood. He was so Stunning and Brave that it inspired Jake Mason, Malcom Pace, and Paolo Montes to come out of the closet. That seems like a pretty important detail about all of them to neglect until just now. But hey, did I mention just how Stunning and Brave that Nico was?

Ugh, why? Just why did it have to have such a stupid and cliche scene as that? Oh, wait, I know why. Many people complained that Cupid forcing Nico to admit he was gay was a violation of consent. So, Rick needed to cover his ass, and Mark wanted to feel Stunning and Brave. It was a match made in Tartarus. Also, Cupid violated Nico’s consent, but the satyrs and dryads somehow didn’t, and they all got off scot-free? Uh, do what now? Like I said, Nico is a great character because he’s more than just a gay kid. Apparently, Mark Oshiro and Rick Riordan no longer agree. That, or Rick can’t write minorities unless they’re at least somewhat stereotypical.

We also get flashbacks to how Nico and Will’s relationship developed. This is theoretically good, but given how poorly written these scenes are, they only serve to make the relationship look even more flimsy and contrived. Sometimes less really is more. On the subject of flashbacks, the flashback dreams Nico had were stupid. The first one was convoluted, and was basically Mark Oshiro going “look at all these cool writing tricks I can do!” The second flashback saw Nico get even more out of character than usual for this trainwreck of a book. It goes back to his first time in Tartarus, and how he first met Nyx, the goddess of night. Nico’s dialogue would have made sense…if it had been written for Percy! It reminds me of how people complained that everyone in Captain America: Civil War sounded like they were trying to imitate Ironman. There was one flashback I enjoyed. I actually liked the bits where Will talks about his adventures with his mom in New York City. Those were some best written parts of the book. Though, I wonder if those were the bits Rick Riordan actually wrote.

Now we need to talk about how Percy and Annabeth got absolutely butchered. Nico and Will decide to visit Mrs. Jackson so they can send an Iris Message to Percy and Annabeth. Why didn’t they just do that at camp before they left? At this point, half this book’s issues can be chalked up to “Mark and Rick didn’t give a damn.” Annabeth especially acts completely out of character. She and Percy make a joke by referring to Tartarus as tartar sauce, and pretend they didn’t hear what Nico and Will said. Annabeth certainly wouldn’t do that, and neither would Percy! He knows when it is time to get serious. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, Percy might not be book smart, but he’s smart in other way. And I refuse to believe Percy and Annabeth wouldn’t demand to go with Nico and Will. You seriously expect me to believe that the guy, whose fatal flaw is loyalty to friends, would just sit this one out?!

Oh, and apparently, Percy and Annabeth totally forgot about Bob. Even though they were quite guilty about that in previous books. But wait, turns out they’ve been thinking about Bob nonstop. Pick one, preferably the latter! Their advice is decidedly of the no duh variety. Guess we can’t be having the heterosexuals do anything useful. That wouldn’t be very Stunning or Brave. And why didn’t Nico go to Hazel, possibly recruiting her? Seems like she’d be pretty useful on an underworld quest. Oh, right, same reason with Percy and Annabeth. I’d also ask why Nico didn’t ask Reyna, but Rick neglected their brother-sister relationship long ago. More on that in a bit.

It is also incredibly bizarre to actually hear the word Percabeth in a Rick Riordan novel. It is a popular portmanteau of Percy and Annabeth used by shippers. Just like Solangelo is used for Nico and Will. However, it has never, until now, appeared in an actual Rick Riordan novel. It is just plain bizarre to see such a term used in an actual Riordanverse book.  I don’t know if it was Rick or Mark who decided to throw that red meat to the shippers. 

However, I do feel it was a bad idea. You have to be careful about feeding the shippers, or else you’ll empower the rabid ones. Trust me, you don’t want the rabid shippers to feel like they have power over you. It never ends well. Huh, you know, a lot of this book’s problems can be explained if we assume it was meant to pander to the shippers. I will say that shipping isn’t bad in and of itself. It becomes bad when you let it get out of hand, or develop unreasonable exceptions. As Aristotle noted, any virtue taken to an extreme becomes a vice.

And the pop culture references. I mean, yikes, this book can give Magnus Chase a run for its money in bad pop culture references. My biggest problem is that Nico has way more pop culture knowledge than he realistically ought to. The biggest offender was the scene where Nico references Lil Nas X, but Will has no idea who that is. Uh, do what now? Nico is from the 1940s, whereas Will is from the present day. He should not know who Lil Nas X is. For those who don’t know, Lil Nas X is an openly gay rapper who raps about being gay. Presumably, he is Mark Oshiro’s favorite rapper. Then there’s all the times Nico refers to Will as a Care Bear. Once again, how does Nico know what those are? The apathy is strong with this one. At least they had him know about Star Wars due to Will being a huge Star Wars fan. On the other hand, we did get the Fuck, Marry, Kill scene as a result of that.

On the subject of other demigods, we learn at the start of the book that literally every other demigod, other than Nico and Will, has left camp. No, no, gods no! Nooooooo! What about all of the campers who don’t have families to go back home to?! Yeah, I know the book tries to explain this by saying they all went to see the world. However, I’m of the opinion that this is a stupid-ass explanation. I refuse to believe that Chiron would allow a bunch of kids, several of whom are pre-teens, to just galavant around the country. Yes, he often sends campers on quests, but that’s a necessary evil. Of course, he’d also refuse to let Nico and Will go to Tartarus unless they had a third person to go with them. So, really, Mark and Rick just magiced everyone away so they wouldn’t have to deal with that. Well, that, and so nobody could cockblock Nico and Will during cuddle time. Chiron still managed to do an admirable job of that, despite everything else.

Chiron’s characterization wasn’t as off as everyone else. However, he should have provided more pushback to Nico’s plan. There were also times, especially towards the end, where he came across as a bit too much like a bumbling sitcom dad. Chiron is supposed to be the wise, grounded fatherly figure of Camp Half-Blood.

Mr. D is once again back at camp. Yay! But his characterization is kind of off. Boo! He never once screws-up Nico’s name. That’s, like, Mr. D’s main schtick. He provides therapy sessions for Nico, except he already did that in The Tower of Nero, but this is treated like he’s doing it for the first time. Mr. D will come across as weirdly nice one minute, and then cartoonishly sadistic the next. The way Mr. D is written comes across like a fanfiction author’s caricature of him. Then again, I guess that’s what it actually was.

I felt that Nyx was not a very good villain. Kronos, Gaea, and Nero all had very clear motivation for their villainy. Nyx, by contrast, just came across as a bland, generic, and overall uninteresting antagonist. It felt like Rick and Mark were really scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with villains for this book. Also, based on actual mythology, I just can’t buy Nyx as a villain. There really isn’t anything to suggest that she’d be villainous. Tartarus should also not have been the main destination for the quest. As a general rule of thumb, you never revisit major villains after you’ve already defeated them. Case in point, Emperor Palpetine just happening to come back in The Rise of Skywalker. Though, in fairness, Rise of Skywalker was certainly flawed, but J.J. Abrams was trying to course correct after Rian Johnson shit the bed in The Last Jedi.

Getting back on track, Tartarus felt completely underwhelming this time around. We already experienced its horrors, far more effectively, with Percy and Annabeth. So, everything had a “been there, done that” feeling to it. The parts where Iapetus regains his memories were a noticeable step-up in terms of writing. Clearly, this was the part where Rick Riordan actually got off his ass. But once again, it would make way more sense of Percy and Annabeth to be the ones to rescue Iapetus. Also, I just gotta ask, how were Will and Nico planning on escaping Tartarus? They just jumped right in with no escape plan. At least Percy and Annabeth knew they needed to get to the doors of death.

I’ll admit the part where Nico gets a family reunion was kind of sweet. Well, if you ignore the fact that Bianca should not be there, since she already reincarnated. I also liked the scene where Nico talks about how he got made fun of for saying the Ares card in Myth-O-Magic looked pretty. I actually related to that. Once, in high school, a classmate asked what music I liked. I mentioned Elton John, because I like his music, and I still do. I got funny looks, and was made fun of, for liking an openly gay musician. I didn’t really see why that was an issue, but this was the same era when “That’s so gay!” was the insult of choice among teenagers. Well, personally, it always struck me as dumb, and needlessly mean, but I’ve always been a nonconformist.

But then we get the scene where Nico calls Piper on Iris Message. Uh, when have they ever interacted, because I sure can’t think of any times. And yet, they act like they’re old friends, and even joke around. Ugh, Mark Oshiro was clearly in the drivers seat once again. Oh, wait, I know why, and so do you. All together now: it’s because they’re both gay. Well, Piper kissed a girl, and she liked it, but she doesn’t know if she’s gay or bisexual, or maybe pansexual. There’s a message her about not getting hung-up on labels. Except we already did that with Reyna! Oh, and Reyna and Nico have brother-sister relationship going on, so why didn’t Nico called Reyna?!

Mark, if I haven’t made it painfully clear by now, being gay is not the same as having a personality. Making a character LGBTQ does not make them well-rounded. There has to be more to them than just “I’m gay!” Having trauma also doesn’t automatically make a character interesting and well-rounded. You intended this book to be for LGBTQ kids, but those kids deserve way better than this tripe! They are not stupid, they deserve good writing, and actually well-developed characters. Empty representation alone does not a plot make.

There is, of course, and audiobook version. I often debate who the best of the Riordanverse narrators is. I’m still not sure how I’d make that tier list. However, I do know that A.J. Beckles is one of the worst, if not the worst, I’ve encountered. He did a horrible job differentiating the characters, and frequently sounded like he was phoning it in.

Well, I guess we should analyze the cover. Yikes, Nico and Will look hideous! Nico looks like a girl, and it looks like he’s wearing lipstick. It almost looks more like Thalia cosplaying as Nico. Not that Will is much better. This has got to be one of the worst Riordanverse book covers. It doesn’t even look like a Riordanverse cover. It looks more like the cover of one of those cheap fantasy paperbacks from the early 2000s. Save my sanity, Viria! 

Ah, now that’s much better. Excellent work as always, Viria. You know what? Let’s also have Nico’s character art from Read Riordan. The Read Riordan character art doesn’t get enough love. 

Now that is one fine looking son of Hades.

Well, we have at long last reached the end of the dissertation on why Mark Oshiro should be put on trial at The Hague for crimes against the Riordanverse. There is nothing of value in this abomination that is laughably referred to as a book. Referring to The Sun and The Star as glorified fanfiction is being incredibly generous. I urge you to skip this one for your own sanity. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Trust me, you aren’t missing much. Regrettably, Nico has pet demons literally made out of his trauma. They’re named Coco-Puffs, because of course they are. So, this book will still impact the wider Riordanverse. I’m not holding my breath in hopes of a retcon.

If this is what the future holds for the Riordanverse, we should all be very afraid. Boy, I sure can’t wait to see which hack author Rick Riordan prostitutes his characters out to next. Not! A thousand times not! Well, later this year we’ve got Chalice of the Gods, a new novel starring Percy, Grover, and Annaberth coming out. Premise could be good, and Mark Oshiro’s slimy tentacles won’t be anywhere near it, so that’s a plus. We’ve also got the live-action Disney+ series coming out. To be honest, I’m kind of worried about how it will turn out, but I’ll reserve judgement til it officially premieres. 

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say. Join me next time when we take a look back at Chalice of the Gods.

Riordan Retrospective: Daughter of the Deep

Welcome once again to my Riordan Retrospective. For those of you just joining the fun, this is my look back at the works of Rick Riordan. That means Percy Jackson, its sequels, and spin-offs. This is less of a formal review and more of a relaxed look back.

Last time, we finished our look back at The Trials of Apollo with a look back at The Tower of Nero. We thought that we’d said goodbye to the worlds of Rick Riordan. Little did we know that a new book was about to surface. As such, we’re taking a look back at Daughter of the Deep.

Ana Dakkar is about to finish her freshman year at Harding-Pencroft Academy. It is a five-year academy specializing in marine science. She, and her nineteen classmates, are about to begin their freshmen trials. Harding-Pencroft holds its students very high standards. However, before they can take off, the school is destroyed by a series of sonic torpedoes. The remaining students and professors of Harding-Pencroft regroup aboard their yacht the Varuna. Ana discovers several major revelations. Jules Verne’s novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island were based on actual events. Captain Nemo was indeed a real person, and Ana is his direct descendant. In fact, the whole point of Harding-Pencroft Academy is to safeguard Nemo’s legacy and technology. Their next stop is Lincoln Island, the final resting place of Nemo and the Nautilus. But danger lurks around every corner as the survivors of Harding-Pencroft are hunted by their old rivals: Land Academy.

Well, it looks like we’re back sooner than I expected. I thought we’d be back for that Irish Mythology book Rick said he was planning. However, that seems to have been put on the back-burner. Daughter of the Deep apparently has been a long time coming. Way back in 2009, Disney executives asked Rick what Disney property he would want to write a book based on. It could be anything he wanted. He chose 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, as the 1954 film adaptation is one of his favorite movies. Technically, Disney only owns the rights to the movie, not the original book. The original Verne novel has long since slipped into the public domain. I’m tempted to think that Rick was, at least somewhat, trolling the executives.

I actually went back and watched the 1954 movie adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I agree with Rick here. The movie is, I must say, a truly underrated gem among live-action Disney films. In fact, I might even give it its own review at some point. Now, the movie does take some liberties with the source material. Though, personally, I’d say that was to its benefit, as it made for a more engaging story that worked better in film. Verne was known for doing a lot of research with his novels, and often devoted entire paragraphs to explaining the science in detail. Unfortunately, this does make for a rather dry reading experience. I’ve heard Verne works better in the original French, but that is a language I do not speak. Amusingly, students at Harding-Pencroft are required to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island. Ana found them both to be a bit dry for her taste. I myself enjoyed The Mysterious Island slightly more than 20,000 Leagues, but it still suffered from many of the same issues.

I’ve heard a few people wonder what it might be like if Rick Riordan were to write a science fiction novel. Well, we now have our answer. We know more about the surface of the Moon than we do our own deep oceans. Twelve people have walked on the surface of the Moon, but only two have ever been to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Ocean-based science fiction is still comparatively rare compared to space-based or terrestrial-based science fiction. So, I’m glad to see that Daughter of the Deep tapped into some of the vast potential of ocean-based science fiction.

Now, I should probably clarify that Daughter of the Deep is set outside of the Riordanverse. Rick has confirmed that it takes place in its own self-contained world. So, don’t expect to see any cameos from Percy, Annabeth, or any other Riordanverse characters. Still, it is similar enough in terms of style to a typical Riordanverse novel, and thus, I’ve chosen to include it as part of the retrospective.

Speaking of style, let’s begin there. Rick has said he took a film writing course before he wrote Daughter of the Deep. That is very apparent in how the prose itself is written. It reads very much like a movie script. The narration is presented in first-person present tense. This helps add to the sense of action and urgency as the plot movies along. The pacing also feels very much like what you might find in a movie. We got a lot of action scenes in quick succession. We get the usual info dumps, but we don’t really take as much time for introspection. As we’ll discuss a bit later, this lack of introspection was very much to the book’s detriment. I’m willing to bet that all this is very much by design. Daughter of the Deep is being adapted into a movie on Disney+. In fact, the movie was announced even before the book came out. So, it certainly feels like Rick wrote Daughter of the Deep with an eye towards the movie adaption.

I would have liked if we had gotten to explore Harding-Pencroft Academy a bit more before it got destroyed. What brief glimpses we do see are utterly fascinating. The students are all decided into four different houses based on their area of study. Yeah, they’ve heard all the Harry Potter jokes plenty of times. Though, personally, when I saw the initials HP in an ocean-themed book, I briefly wondered if Rick Riordan was going to tackle the Lovecraft Mythos. Back on topic, the houses are Dolphin, Shark, Cephalopod, and Orca. Dolphin focuses on communications, exploration, cryptography, and counterintelligence. Shark handles command, combat, weapons systems, logistics. Cephalopod deals with engineering, applied mechanics, innovation, and defensive systems. Orca is all about medicine, psychology, education, marine biology, and communal memory. If you’re wondering about that last one, it basically means the history of Harding-Pencroft and Captain Nemo.

One of the things I appreciated was that each of the four main characters is from a different house. One of my gripes about Harry Potter is that pretty much all the important characters come from Gryffindor. Well, unless they’re a villain, and come from Slytherin. Ravenclaw had Luna and Cho, I guess, but Hufflepuff got the short end of the stick for sure. Getting back on track, having the four main protagonists of Daughter of the Deep be from different houses provided a theme that everyone has something unique to bring to the table. You can also see it as advocating for multiculturalism, but without being preachy about it. 

 However, I do have on criticism. House Orca needed a better name. Orcas are a type of dolphin, the largest, in fact. We’ve got representatives for mammals, fish, and mollusks. How’s about giving some love to the reptiles? Personally, I would have named them House Sea Turtle instead. Or failing that, show some love to the echinoderms, and name them House Seastar. House Sea Cucumber would also work. Don’t give me that look! Sea cucumbers are noble animals and wonders of nature.

I do wish that we’d gotten to see more of Harding-Pencroft before it was destroyed. What brief glimpses we do get are utterly fascinating. As you might expect, they have quite an expansive aquarium full marine creatures. Upperclassmen train in submarine simulations using full-size mock-up submarines submerged in deep pools. However, the most fascinating class is one where students get to consider, and theorize, about the ways technology and science might have developed had history gone differently. As a major fan of alternate history I have but one thing to say: sign me up now! Well, its actually there as a way to slowly ease the students into learning the truth about Captain Nemo and his inventions. Still, sounds like a very fun class to take. I also liked how the various sections of the school are named after famous ocean explorers. There’s one part named after the Chinese navigator Zheng He, and one named after the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.

I thought all of the diving scenes were particularly well-written. Rick Riordan has a true passion for scuba diving. This really shines through during the diving scenes. I also really like how the diving suits all use jet-propulsion that mimics the siphons of cephalopods. That was a really creative touch. 

Also, for those wondering, Land Academy was named after Ned Land. He founded it, along with Professor Aronnax, in hopes to keeping the world safe from Nemo. Aronnax and Land viewed Nemo as a madman. I assume Aronnax was the brains behind that one. Ned Land was good natured, but not terribly bright. 

Okay, let’s talk about the characters. Ana is the protagonist, but I want to save her for last. We’ll start with her roommates, and best friends, Nelinha and Ester. Nelinha da Silva grew up in an orphanage in Rio de Janeiro, but got to attend Harding-Pencroft on a scholarship. She’s also the closest the series gets to referencing Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I can best describe Nelinha as what would happen if Charles Beckendorf and Silena Beauregard were to have a kid. And, you know, if they were still alive. She’s a complete mechanical genius, and geeks out over machines and engine parts. She’s a member of House Cephalopod, naturally. However, she is also obsessed with fashion, and always makes sure to look her best at all times. Nelinha doesn’t just pack outfits, she packs entire wardrobes.

One of my prior complaints about Rick Riordan is that he only seems to know how to write one type of female character. Namely, he seems to believe that being a strong female character means being a tomboy who hates all things girly. So, it was nice to see Nelinha as a course correction on that front. Nelinha being from Brazil is likely a nod to how popular Rick Riordan’s books are in Brazil. So, I’m sure Brazilian fans were excited to finally get a Brazilian main character.

On the flipside, we also get Ester Harding. She’s a member of House Orca. She is a blood relative of one of the founders of Harding-Pencroft. She is also the first autistic character in a Rick Riordan book. I’m still bitter about how he wrote a Muslims character before he wrote an autistic character. In the Riordanverse, anyone can be a demigod, unless you’re autistic, it would seem. I had high hopes for Ester. You don’t see autistic girls too often in the media. Riordan has said that he got sensitivity readers to help him with writing characters from different cultural backgrounds. However, it would seem none of them offered insight into autistic people. It almost feels like Riordan watched a couple episodes of The Good Doctor and was like “I got this!” You know those TikTok clips of that guy having a temper tantrum while shouting “I am a surgeon!” Yeah, that’s The Good Doctor. It was another show I had high hopes for, but fell back on stereotyping autistic people. Don’t get me started on my problems with The Good Doctor, we’ll be here all day.

Anyway, Ester displays a number of stereotypical traits. She yo-yos between being basically non-verbal, and shouting at the top of her lungs. She does this all in a robotic monotone voice. In contrast to Nelinha, Ester has basically no fashion sense, and seems to be going for the long-lost daughter of Albert Einstein look. Ester also doesn’t have much in the way of common sense, and though it never comes up, she’s probably Jewish. Not too many gentiles name Ester. She’s got an excellent memory, to the point of being almost eidetic, but that’s somewhat accurate. Well, maybe not eidetic, but most autistic people do often have amazing memories. How do you think I’m about to write these retrospectives?

Ana briefly remarks about how some people claim that autistic people can’t feel love or other emotions, and that Ester proves this isn’t true, due to how empathetic she is. Again, this is true, as autistic people can be quite empathetic. Though, I can’t help but wonder if Disney specially made Rick insert that line to cover their asses. See, this isn’t the first time Disney has tackled autism. There was an episode of Girl Meets World about how we should all be nice to autistic people. All well and good, but they also claim that autistic people are incapable of experiencing emotions, including love.

Gemini Twain has been assigned as Ana’s bodyguard. He’s a no-nonsense member of House Shark. He’s also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints. This is certainly an interesting choice, as Gemini is also Black. Historically, Mormons haven’t exactly gotten along well with Black people. Or Native Americans, or Polynesians, or…well, pretty much anybody who isn’t White. The most infamous instance was when Mormon schools refused to desegregate. The American government threatened to revoke their tax exemption status, but wouldn’t you know it, Mormon God rather conveniently changed his mind about Black people. Though, Gemini’s faith doesn’t really come up that much. He doesn’t like swearing or taking the lord’s name in vein, and he mentions his grandma raised him and his brother in the LDS church, but that’s about it. Well, he did get into a minor scuffle with Nelinha. Gemini’s brother went on his mission trip to Brazil, and Gemini assumed Nelinha would know his brother, because she’s from Brazil.

Well, nice touch having one of the non-White characters be flawed enough to be accidentally racist. I remember back in The Hammer of Thor retrospective when I said, paraphrased, “A Muslim demigod? What’s next, a Mormon demigod?” I have on occasion wondered if Rick Riordan reads these retrospectives. Probably a long shot, but you never know.

Technically, there is a fifth main character: the Nautilus itself. It took until about halfway through the book before the Nautilus showed up. Yeah, this book has some pacing issues. The Nautilus has what can best be described as an artificial intelligence system. Also, apparently it also includes some organic components. As you might imagine, it is extremely untrustworthy of anyone who isn’t a blood relative of Prince Dakkar, aka Captain Nemo. So, Ana’s biometrics are key to unlocking the Nautilus.

Unfortunately, the Nautilus also highlights one of the issues I had with the book. Apparently, every major invention of the 20th Century was a result of Harding-Pencroft discreetly releasing them to the public. That, or Land Institute stealing them. This caused Daughter of the Deep to evoke the Great Man Theory of History. The theory goes that society gets stuck in ruts until a great man, and it’s always a man, shakes up the status quo and moves the world forward. This view has largely fallen out of favor with mainstream historians. Most historians emphasis how the changes were put into motion, often by complex chains of influences, long before the supposedly great men came about. 

You do kind of get this with the main Riordanverse, where pretty much anyone who did anything was either a demigod or a magician. However, that was softened by just how many demigods and magicians there were throughout history. So, it felt more like a team-effort. By contrast, Daughter of the Deep gave us a single scientific übermensch who, apparently, leapfrogged from steam-power to cold fusion reactors. Now, granted, this is also true of Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Still, maybe Rick shouldn’t have depicted Nemo in such a lock, stock, and barrel sort of way.

And that segues into my next point. Harding-Pencroft is deathly afraid of letting the general public get access to Nemo’s technology. They only release technology sparingly, and only when they feel humanity has earned it. Uh, and what metric do they use to determine how worthy humanity is? Beats me, the book offers no details. The adults all make a big deal about how corporations would try to monopolize Nemo’s technology, but nobody ever suggests releasing it as open-source tech. Well, I know the real reason for that. There’s no way that Disney, the poster boy for copyright abuse, is going to be advocating for open-source. A particularly facepalm worthy moment is that fact that Harding-Pencroft refuses to release cold fusion technology…despite climate change being a serious issue! The book would have you believe Harding-Pencroft are the good guys. However, I’m tempted to think Land Institute had a point about Harding-Pencroft being corrupt and selfish.

Hey, wait a minute. Harding-Pencroft is a secretive organization that is very selective of its membership. It trains its students so that, effectively, they’re cut-off from the outside world. They indoctrinate their students from a young age into their views. They have charismatic leaders and founders. Yikes, I hope the cafeteria never served Kool-Aid! Harding-Pencroft is a cult!

It would seem that Harding-Pencroft has something akin to the Prime Detective from Star Trek. There has been a lot of debate about the morality of the Prime Detective. The main thinking seems to be don’t give advanced weaponry to civilizations that aren’t morally mature. The Original Series also says that it is okay to break the Prime Directive if a planet is in imminent danger. Contrast this with Next Generation, where one episode has Captain Picard dithering about if he should save a planet, even if it break the Prime Directive. Of course, the worst offender was Voyager. It had an episode where the moral was, basically, don’t save a baby trapped in a burning car, or else the baby will grow-up to be Hitler. Yeah, the Prime Directive kind of devolved into an immoral religious dogma as Star Trek went on.

Point is, Harding-Pencroft’s Prime Directive seems to lean towards that of the later Star Trek entries. Apparently, screw the planet, we need to keep the tech away from corporations! The irony of Disney railing against corporations is so thick you can practically cut it with a machete. Also, if the concern is that the corporations would hoard stuff like the cure for cancer, well, how’s that any different than what Harding-Pencroft is doing?

Much is made about how Ana must choose to reconcile both the good and the bad of Nemo’s legacy. However, nothing really comes of this. We don’t see her seriously debate or challenge Harding-Pencroft and Land Institute’s views of Nemo. In fact, she gets indoctrinated into Harding-Pencroft’s views pretty quickly. It would have been a great opportunity to show Nemo’s complexity, not just tell us about it. How many innocent lives did he take in his quest for vengeance? Should he have shared his technology with the oppressed peoples chafing under the yoke of colonialism? Is it possible that Land Institute has some valid points, and that Harding-Pencroft has lost its way? All excellent questions that sadly go unanswered.

As for why that is, it ties into the biggest problem I have with Daughter of the Deep. Overall, it feels like merely the novelization of the yet to be produced movie. I was hoping that the novel would be able to stand on its own merits. However, Riordan clearly wrote it so that the adoption process would be streamlined. Debating ethics might not translate to film. Though, it could work in the hands of a competent scriptwriter.

I feel this streamlining was ultimately to the novel’s determent. I certainly didn’t hate Daughter of the Deep. It had plenty of the action and adventure you’d expect from a Rick Riordan novel. However, for every thing I liked, there was almost always something else I didn’t like. It is ironic that Rick claims he spent years working on Daughter of the Deep. It overall feels like it was yanked out of the oven before it had a chance to bake properly. Then again, he also claims to have gotten the idea for Magnus Chase before he wrote Percy Jackson, and look how that turned out.

The audiobook is narrated by Soneela Nankani. She’s the narrator for the Aru Shah audiobooks. Personally, I wasn’t too thrilled when I saw that Soneela would be narrating. However, she gave a fairly decent performance. She voiced Ester in a rather stereotypical way, like she was imitating Sean from The Good Doctor, but that was the only true sour note. Speaking of music, the audiobook is filled with music. There’s lots of musical cues throughout the audiobook. Scenes of wonder and whimsy have inspirational music, action scenes have exciting music. There’s a scene where Ana plays a pipe organ aboard the Nautilus, and we actually get to hear it. I thought that was a really nice touch.

Now, let’s analyze the cover. This is a nice looking cover. The undersea landscape is bright and vibrant. We see Ana and Gemini in their divining suits. Their faces are clear and unobscured. The Rick Riordan Presents books goes with this approach as well. Something about it being important for minority kids to see themselves clearly represented on book covers. We also see the Nautilus in the background, along with a giant octopus.

So, Daughter of the Deep has a lot of potential, and I certainly wouldn’t mind a sequel. However, there’s a lot of room for improvement. It needed to stand on its own merits, not just be the dry run for the movie script. Still, it's lightyears better than our next port of call. Next time, we’re tackling The Sun and The Star. The claws are coming out, and I’m prepared to fully eviscerate Mark Oshiro’s glorified self-insert fanfic.

Well, I think that should do it from me for now. I will see you guys next time.