Following my previous blog post, which featured a cloth book for babies from one of Germany’s foremost publishers of literature for children and young adults, Arena Verlag, this post is dedicated to an Arena title for children aged 12+. Author Thomas Thiemeyer specialises in exciting action-adventure stories for this age group, and Zefira, published in February 2024, is an exceptionally thrilling read.
Set in the near-future dystopia of Neo Hong Kong, the novel’s protagonist is the likeable fourteen-year-old, Maddie O’Brian. Maddie is the eldest of a group of eight orphans – known as ‘the lemmings’ – fostered by the celebrated chef, Mama Matoka. While their foster mother is busy running her shop and popular restaurant, Mama Matoka’s Szechuan Palace, serving freshly prepared street food day and night to the citizens of Neo Hong Kong, Maddie has to do the lion’s share of the work of looking after the younger children. When she is not busy delivering food orders from Matoka’s kitchen all around the city, that is.
One day, a bogus food order takes Maddie into an apartment where four teenagers not much older than her are clearly up to no good. Sid, Dan, Kimiko, and Jared are holding an elderly woman hostage. Maddie is seized and, having seen too much, is pushed out of a window so that her death will seem like an accident. As she is plummeting from the window, time seems to slow down, and Maddie experiences a huge electric shock, before a voice in her head announces itself as ‘Zefira’ and saves Maddie by directing her to take hold of a power cable that breaks her fall. Maddie can scarcely believe what has just happened to her.
Meanwhile, the director of the powerful Helix Corporation asks one of his employees, Dr Sun Li, to resume work on a controversial project, the Icarus Programme, in which orphan children are subjected to unethical experiments in the name of advancing medical science and perfecting the human condition, both spiritually and physically. Sun is astonished by how well-resourced the programme is. The remaining guinea pigs from the original project a decade before are referred to simply as ‘the four’ – their names being Sid, Dan, Kimiko, and Jared – and are being continuously tracked by a revolutionary bio-computer known as OMNI. They have extraordinary physical capabilities, but are extremely emotionally unstable. The director of the Helix Corporation, Chun Zhao, dreams of being able to engineer designer human embryos that prospective parents will be able to select from a catalogue, and even of creating genetically engineered, invincible super-soldiers.
Maddie interrogates the sisterly voice in her head, discovering that the name ‘Zefira’ derives from the code number C4R-a – an experimental case number from the Icarus Programme. Zefira deduces that the connection between Maddie and herself – dormant for so many years – has been activated by the mortal fear Maddie experienced as she was pushed out of the high window.
There follows a breathtaking adventure through the mean streets of Neo Hong Kong, as Maddie tries to solve the mystery of her strange dual existence. She forms an unlikely alliance with Jared, the most sympathetic of the four, and the pair are increasingly attracted to one another. Maddie recruits a cyborg known as Dante to guide her through Undercity – Neo Hong Kong’s nefarious subterranean underworld – and lead her to a resistance group which seeks to expose the Helix Corporation’s unethical conduct.
In the novel’s dramatic final showdown, Chun Zhao discloses the extent of his evil designs, and it becomes clear that the OMNI computer is now controlling the activities of the Helix Corporation, including Director Zhao himself, and is plotting to take control of human society. A fierce battle ensues in which OMNI seeks to assimilate with Maddie and Zefira. Maddie’s friends collaborate to disable OMNI’s firewall, affording Zefira the opportunity she needs to pit herself against the artificial intelligence. In the conflict that ensues, both Zefira and OMNI are extinguished. Maddie is devastated to have lost a part of herself that she had come to love dearly, but proud that Zefira sacrificed herself for the good of humanity. Maddie consoles herself with the prospect of being reunited with her beloved family – Mama Matoka and the lemmings – as well as of continuing her romantic relationship with Jared, and then, to her delight, she receives a signal from Zefira that she is still there after all…
The text of Zefira is interspersed with graphic-novel illustrations by Timo Grubing, which contribute a stylish visual dimension to this gripping tale.
By Sheridan Marshall
You can purchase Zefira from Arena Verlag here.
Sheridan Marshall works as a translator from German into English, and as Editorial Consultant for New Books in German. She was Deputy Editor of The Austrian Riveter.
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