A futuristic novella by Olivier May, intense and accomplished on the sensitive subject of violence against children. Nice-Premium read it for you.
July 2017. Jon and his sister Maya are alone on a small Greek island, as he steps away for a few minutes, Maya disappears…
Seven years later, the pain and sorrow are still there. It’s impossible to mourn when you don’t know what happened. Jon’s parents survive, he fights every day to find his sister, the mysterious song of Ekhirit heard during a retreat in a Buryat monastery by Lake Baikal cannot quench his thirst for vengeance, this flame that still keeps him standing: to find Maya no matter the cost.
This novella by Olivier May is truly intense and gripping. The story creates empathy in the reader with the Zorn family who heal their wounds the best they can. I really appreciated the chapter breakdown which makes the story very paced and the precision of the vocabulary of our future reality makes the story very credible. It’s real, we’re there, it’s tomorrow 2024, and the dominance of the Triple W network is chilling…
Despite its short format, the author takes us from Lake Baikal to Bali via Switzerland and Ukraine, we travel with Jon. We accompany his father through the corridors of Europol, the European branch of Interpol, through the intricacies of the network, hackers. We become attached to these characters who resemble us, we worry about the fate of the children in the images viewed by Jon. These are never described very precisely, not weighing down the novella with sordid and grim details.
The only criticism one might make is that this story deserved to be longer, why not a novel… We would have liked to know more about Jon, his development, how he reaches such a high level of network knowledge, to dwell more on Lara, the mother, who is not developed enough, to take the opportunity to describe more the new actions of the police in 2024 and of course to deepen the debate on pedophilia, the suffering of families and the act of taking justice into one’s own hands.
I would have taken great pleasure in reading another 100 pages…
This novella can be read in one sitting as Olivier May manages to immerse us in the story, making us want to discover if Maya is indeed alive, if Jon will succeed, and to hear the mysterious song of Ekhirit again on the banks of a lake crystallized by the cold.
