Review: Seeing the World Through New Eyes
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 14, 2012
Blind Traveler's Blues by Robert P. Bennett starts off with events two months in the past, when a discovery is made on a scientific dig in Mexico. What happens there affects not just those at the dig site, but the entire world. With the first chapter, we leave the dig behind and move into the present day, in the year 2021. The world has changed.The focus of the book is Douglas Abledan, a blind businessman who is scheduled to go on a vacation, but whose boss is intent on turning that vacation into a business trip. The good news for you and I, the readers, is that we see things though Douglas' eyes, or more accurately, his senses other than sight. It's an interesting look into this altered future and a more fascinating look into how Douglas has adapted to his loss of sight. We see sights in Chicago through his senses of touch, hearing, smell and taste. When a woman he meets is killed, he sets out to determine why and who killed her, taking us along with him.At times it was difficult to understand his determination to find out who killed the woman he had only known a couple of days. But I let that go and followed him as he skillfully investigated her death, unknowingly moving himself closer to the edge.I liked reading a book where the main character is blind. It was interesting to be in his head, to move with him as he worked the case, to watch him stick his nose in places you and I would have avoided, to worry for him when he walked unknowingly into danger. Abledan is not timid. If anything, he's a bit cocky, occasionally reckless, and always confident. Wouldn't we all want to be that way?I give Blind Traveler's Blues by Robert P. Bennett a rating of Hel-of-a-Character.