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spacedout_reader's review
adventurous
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.25
I can't give it only one star because I have loved 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea since I was a child, and I was so happy to see a book inspired by Verne's classic from Rick Riordan. But unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed in the execution.
I read this on audiobook and the narration was slow-paced and left a little to be desired.
If anyone happens to read this review, the following is a rant mainly for my own benefit and you are more than welcome to skip it.
20,000 Leagues has social commentary woven throughout, with Captain Nemo, in my opinion at least, as a sort of antihero/antivillain. Like, it's great that he loves the ocean and helps the downtrodden and prevents needless killing of whales etc., but also he is occasionally a bit of a sea terrorist. You can see why though! He has a truly tragic backstory and all, but he does kidnap three guys (after saving them from drowning) and also attack ships occasionally. Daughter of the Deep tries to do something with that complexity but to me it didn't work at all. Pierre Arronax, Ned Land, and presumably Conseil (of whom I will not accept this slander) decided after their escape to capture/reverse-engineer Captain Nemo's inventions - to benefit the imperialist powers of the time, I guess. This is where perhaps my primary issue lies. The Pencroft-Harding Institute has many of these inventions, and discovers more shortly before the main events of the book. They refuse to release any of this technology into the world because governments - "or worse, corporations" - will monopolize them and either use them for bad stuff or just not let as many people use them as ideally possible. The problem is, when you have things like advanced medical, material, or agricultural (aquacultural?) technology, keeping those a secret helps less people than a monopoly or government that has and uses them. The weapons I get, but the rest of it is pretty ridiculous. Also, if you own the stuff, can't you patent it and use it in a way that helps people, or allow other people to use it? Or would that make you a corporation and therefore necessarily monopolistic and evil?
(As an aside, apparently Nemo developed his aquaculture to a degree at which he could become ocean vegan, but also the Nautilus travels at speeds which I didn't do the math on but has to be near supersonic, and I'm pretty sure plenty of fish, whales, sharks, etc. would be splatted on the windshield or impaled on the spear front of the ship. Can't be good for marine ecology!)
The characters were okay, although they didn't seem to develop much. Also I'm all for characters with diverse religions, ethnicities, personalities, abilities, opinions, etc., but in this case I just got a vibe that there was almost an actual checklist going on. It got overwhelming at about the point that the main character has her period, and it's lingered on for way too long. I have periods. I also go to the bathroom. I don't need a bunch of details about either in stories where it's not plot-relevant or character-developing, and here it's not really either. And since I'm ranting, I'll nit-pick the fact that she took painkillers and then threw up but isn't mentioned to take another painkiller to replace the one she threw up. Did she decide to just suffer it out at that point? If you're going to go into that much detail about a girl's period then why not have it make sense?
Lastly, the plot hinged on a few elements that strained my reasonably flexible suspension of disbelief. For one thing, Esther (I think that was her name) is somehow able to telepathically-ish communicate with the sentient Nautilus - on top of already being able to basically talk to animals (but a few characters can do that, so.... whatever, I guess). For another thing, Captain Nemo apparently invented a literal keytar as a remote control for the Nautilus. I would almost be willing to accept that as part of the Riordan style, but on top of everything else going on it was just tooooo much.
I didn't even mention the, um, aroused giant octopus. I guess I'll just leave that at that.
I read this on audiobook and the narration was slow-paced and left a little to be desired.
If anyone happens to read this review, the following is a rant mainly for my own benefit and you are more than welcome to skip it.
20,000 Leagues has social commentary woven throughout, with Captain Nemo, in my opinion at least, as a sort of antihero/antivillain. Like, it's great that he loves the ocean and helps the downtrodden and prevents needless killing of whales etc., but also he is occasionally a bit of a sea terrorist. You can see why though! He has a truly tragic backstory and all, but he does kidnap three guys (after saving them from drowning) and also attack ships occasionally. Daughter of the Deep tries to do something with that complexity but to me it didn't work at all. Pierre Arronax, Ned Land, and presumably Conseil (of whom I will not accept this slander) decided after their escape to capture/reverse-engineer Captain Nemo's inventions - to benefit the imperialist powers of the time, I guess. This is where perhaps my primary issue lies. The Pencroft-Harding Institute has many of these inventions, and discovers more shortly before the main events of the book. They refuse to release any of this technology into the world because governments - "or worse, corporations" - will monopolize them and either use them for bad stuff or just not let as many people use them as ideally possible. The problem is, when you have things like advanced medical, material, or agricultural (aquacultural?) technology, keeping those a secret helps less people than a monopoly or government that has and uses them. The weapons I get, but the rest of it is pretty ridiculous. Also, if you own the stuff, can't you patent it and use it in a way that helps people, or allow other people to use it? Or would that make you a corporation and therefore necessarily monopolistic and evil?
(As an aside, apparently Nemo developed his aquaculture to a degree at which he could become ocean vegan, but also the Nautilus travels at speeds which I didn't do the math on but has to be near supersonic, and I'm pretty sure plenty of fish, whales, sharks, etc. would be splatted on the windshield or impaled on the spear front of the ship. Can't be good for marine ecology!)
The characters were okay, although they didn't seem to develop much. Also I'm all for characters with diverse religions, ethnicities, personalities, abilities, opinions, etc., but in this case I just got a vibe that there was almost an actual checklist going on. It got overwhelming at about the point that the main character has her period, and it's lingered on for way too long. I have periods. I also go to the bathroom. I don't need a bunch of details about either in stories where it's not plot-relevant or character-developing, and here it's not really either. And since I'm ranting, I'll nit-pick the fact that she took painkillers and then threw up but isn't mentioned to take another painkiller to replace the one she threw up. Did she decide to just suffer it out at that point? If you're going to go into that much detail about a girl's period then why not have it make sense?
Lastly, the plot hinged on a few elements that strained my reasonably flexible suspension of disbelief. For one thing, Esther (I think that was her name) is somehow able to telepathically-ish communicate with the sentient Nautilus - on top of already being able to basically talk to animals (but a few characters can do that, so.... whatever, I guess). For another thing, Captain Nemo apparently invented a literal keytar as a remote control for the Nautilus. I would almost be willing to accept that as part of the Riordan style, but on top of everything else going on it was just tooooo much.
I didn't even mention the, um, aroused giant octopus. I guess I'll just leave that at that.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content
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