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Points of View #1
Points of View by Lauria, Nando (1994) Audio CD
In the POINTS OF VIEW series, the hero is a young blind Londoner, named Horace Mayberry, who is a cautious lad, who occasionally enjoys vivid dreams of being a secret agent. Then he becomes fitted with superhuman, nanotronic, eyes for free, but there is a catch.. They are inherently intelligent and can develop various functions to assist in whatever awkward situations he experiences. In payment for the eyes, he is recruited into a secret government agency as an apprehensive assistant to an experienced agent and embarks on a series of adventures, including being abducted twice by an international gang of terrorists. Their leader, Rudolph Beckman, is a billionaire financier who is after the secrets of the laboratory that developed the nanotronic eyes. He uses a trio of henchmen to do his bidding.
Each risky situation Horace encounters causes his eyes to develop something new, and enables his introvert personality to evolve too. His dreams become more meaningful as he becomes somewhat impulsive and headstrong. The exciting finale in this first volume covers an attack by the two agents, backed up by a Spanish SWAT team, on the crooks hideout in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands!
Each risky situation Horace encounters causes his eyes to develop something new, and enables his introvert personality to evolve too. His dreams become more meaningful as he becomes somewhat impulsive and headstrong. The exciting finale in this first volume covers an attack by the two agents, backed up by a Spanish SWAT team, on the crooks hideout in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands!
Audio CD
First published July 31, 2012
37 people want to read
About the author
Tony Thorne
30 books36 followersTony Thorne MBE, a Chartered Design Engineer, built up a research and development company in Kent, England. Its eventual worldwide commercial success led to him being awarded the MBE by the Queen. Now retired, he writes speculative, science and fantasy, fiction and has published over fifteen collections of short stories, including the award winning TENERIFE TALL TALES trilogy, and MACABRE TALES. Also ROBOTS INCLUDED, TALL SF TALES FOR TEENAGERS, THREE KINDS OF CULTURE SHOCK, all now available, as eBooks and paperbacks from AMAZON, B & N, WH Smith, etc.. His first novel, POINTS OF VIEW (near future espionage) was published in the USA, by Eternal Press, Santa Rosa, CA, They also accepted Book 2 but were taken over soon after. Then things fell apart and after nearly 2 years of no, or inadequate, progress, he accepted their offer to self-publish the series himself, with a new cover theme. Books 1 to 3 are now available from Amazon (eBook and paperback) and Book 4 will be later in 2018.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 5, 2019
My opinion:
It's the first time I write a review without having read the book until the end. You may wonder, then, how could I provide you with a full review? Well, I will rather tell you why I didn't manage to finish this reading.
Point of View, Tome 1, had everything to arouse my curiosity. First, it was a spy book, and it's one of my guilty pleasure, even if I haven't read that many novels of this genre. The second detail about the story was the fact we had a hero who is blind, at least at the beginning of the story. And, you may not know it yet, but I'm blind myself, and representation really matters to me. So I was glad to finally find the main character who shared something with me.
I will first talk of the story and the plot. At first sight, I thought the summary was promising. A super spy with advanced technological eyes, it could be very interesting! But halfway through my reading... I realized that I hadn't got attached to the characters. Maybe the doctor who implants Horace's new prosthetic eyes, because he is the kind of cryptic character that I love, the kind you want to slap in the face because he doesn't want to give the main character (and you, the reader, by the way) the answers he seeks, but he has something of Walter Bishop, any Fringe fans here? Whatever.
Horace... well, he is the character I wanted to discover the most. But despite the way his disability his dealt with (I will talk about this in a sec), I didn't manage to sympathize with him. At first, I thought it was because he was thrown in a world and an adventure of which he knew nothing (and really Professor Cryptic didn't help) but... this phase of the story was too long to my taste. I saw Horace going from an adventure to another and he was just standing there, doing nothing. OK, he didn't know he would become a spy, and he didn't get much information on what would happen to him... But I didn't manage to go beyond this aspect of the story.
I also have to admit that the way Tony Thorne pictured Horace's disability stopped me from loving the character. I thought I would relate to him due to his disability and… I did, maybe in the first chapter or so. The fact he lost his sight when he was a teenager and depression fell over him afterwards, I can understand. The difficulty of independence when you are blind, especially at the beginning is very nerve-racking and hard on you.
But we have an eighteen-year-old character who is blind, lock himself up in his room, is wealthy and bitter against his disability. I don't understand why able authors always think that you have to be bitter when you have a disability. It's not always easy to accept it, I'm still struggling myself even after a decade, but… in four years, never Horace had sought help for independence, people who could help him to learn how to accomplish daily tasks, such as cooking, navigating with a white cane or a guide dog. He learnt Braille, at least... but once more, this is reductive for blind people. We can live on our own with some help still, but there're things we can do. We can be depressed because of sight loss but we can also obtain mental support, health care and things that sighted people have.
Depicting Horace like he cannot really live until he gets his sight back is... well, I don't want to use too many strong words, because, with time I got used to this kind of representation, it's the archetypes of a blind person for sighted people. So I won't tell you I was really surprised. Disappointed certainly, as every time I start a book promising diversity. But if I can sometimes overcome clumsy representations for LGBTQI+ characters, for example (and the keyword is sometimes, not always) disability is too close to home.
Maybe the author had a sensibility reader for the topic of disability, maybe he knows a person who lost their sight and didn't accept it... but we need positive representations; not to see the disability as a problem you need to resolve, something else than the bitter/depressed/suicidal disabled or chronically heal person who can survive without an able to save their life. Either it is some people the disabled person will pay because, yes they necessarily need someone else to do things for them or someone who will make them get out of their bubble of depression and self-deprecation. It's difficult to write a positive representation of a disabled character because it sometimes borders on inspiration porn. But if you wish to write a marginalized character (either it is a person of colour/disabled/LGBTQI+/etc) make your researches, please. There're a lot of resources on the Internet, articles, testimony, organizations, etc... and if you can, beta-read your story with a sensibility reader concerned by the minority you want to represent.
Sorry, I might have been a bit hard in this review and really, what I said it's not only for the author of Point Of View. I'm sure his book is full of adventures after a few more chapters, and people will sympathize and get attached to Horace. It was the opportunity for me to approach the topic of diversity in literature; because representation matters.
It's the first time I write a review without having read the book until the end. You may wonder, then, how could I provide you with a full review? Well, I will rather tell you why I didn't manage to finish this reading.
Point of View, Tome 1, had everything to arouse my curiosity. First, it was a spy book, and it's one of my guilty pleasure, even if I haven't read that many novels of this genre. The second detail about the story was the fact we had a hero who is blind, at least at the beginning of the story. And, you may not know it yet, but I'm blind myself, and representation really matters to me. So I was glad to finally find the main character who shared something with me.
I will first talk of the story and the plot. At first sight, I thought the summary was promising. A super spy with advanced technological eyes, it could be very interesting! But halfway through my reading... I realized that I hadn't got attached to the characters. Maybe the doctor who implants Horace's new prosthetic eyes, because he is the kind of cryptic character that I love, the kind you want to slap in the face because he doesn't want to give the main character (and you, the reader, by the way) the answers he seeks, but he has something of Walter Bishop, any Fringe fans here? Whatever.
Horace... well, he is the character I wanted to discover the most. But despite the way his disability his dealt with (I will talk about this in a sec), I didn't manage to sympathize with him. At first, I thought it was because he was thrown in a world and an adventure of which he knew nothing (and really Professor Cryptic didn't help) but... this phase of the story was too long to my taste. I saw Horace going from an adventure to another and he was just standing there, doing nothing. OK, he didn't know he would become a spy, and he didn't get much information on what would happen to him... But I didn't manage to go beyond this aspect of the story.
I also have to admit that the way Tony Thorne pictured Horace's disability stopped me from loving the character. I thought I would relate to him due to his disability and… I did, maybe in the first chapter or so. The fact he lost his sight when he was a teenager and depression fell over him afterwards, I can understand. The difficulty of independence when you are blind, especially at the beginning is very nerve-racking and hard on you.
But we have an eighteen-year-old character who is blind, lock himself up in his room, is wealthy and bitter against his disability. I don't understand why able authors always think that you have to be bitter when you have a disability. It's not always easy to accept it, I'm still struggling myself even after a decade, but… in four years, never Horace had sought help for independence, people who could help him to learn how to accomplish daily tasks, such as cooking, navigating with a white cane or a guide dog. He learnt Braille, at least... but once more, this is reductive for blind people. We can live on our own with some help still, but there're things we can do. We can be depressed because of sight loss but we can also obtain mental support, health care and things that sighted people have.
Depicting Horace like he cannot really live until he gets his sight back is... well, I don't want to use too many strong words, because, with time I got used to this kind of representation, it's the archetypes of a blind person for sighted people. So I won't tell you I was really surprised. Disappointed certainly, as every time I start a book promising diversity. But if I can sometimes overcome clumsy representations for LGBTQI+ characters, for example (and the keyword is sometimes, not always) disability is too close to home.
Maybe the author had a sensibility reader for the topic of disability, maybe he knows a person who lost their sight and didn't accept it... but we need positive representations; not to see the disability as a problem you need to resolve, something else than the bitter/depressed/suicidal disabled or chronically heal person who can survive without an able to save their life. Either it is some people the disabled person will pay because, yes they necessarily need someone else to do things for them or someone who will make them get out of their bubble of depression and self-deprecation. It's difficult to write a positive representation of a disabled character because it sometimes borders on inspiration porn. But if you wish to write a marginalized character (either it is a person of colour/disabled/LGBTQI+/etc) make your researches, please. There're a lot of resources on the Internet, articles, testimony, organizations, etc... and if you can, beta-read your story with a sensibility reader concerned by the minority you want to represent.
Sorry, I might have been a bit hard in this review and really, what I said it's not only for the author of Point Of View. I'm sure his book is full of adventures after a few more chapters, and people will sympathize and get attached to Horace. It was the opportunity for me to approach the topic of diversity in literature; because representation matters.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2017
A secret agent with futuristic eyes on the hunt for stolen deadly weapons. See my official review here: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/vie...
December 18, 2012
Horace Mayberry has always dreamed of becoming a special agent, but being born with eye problems, his dreams seem even more impossible when, just after his 17th birthday he becomes totally blind.
Then Professor Oscar Freeman enters his life and offers him a revolutionary procedure, which he has developed at his special nanotechnological laboratory.
Soon Horace discovers the laboratory is government funded, and the military have many uses for his eyes. His training commences and Captain Aubrey Jacksons is assigned to look after him. It is soon obvious to everyone that the potential uses for the eyes go way beyond anyone’s expectations.
However, danger is forever present for Horace, in the form of Rudolph Beckmann, who wants to steal the technology for his own uses.
Will Rudolph Beckmann succeed?
Will Horace fulfil his dream of becoming a special agent?
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this futuristic, action packed thriller. Its fast pace and intriguing technological possibilities left me hoping that Tony Thorne has many more adventures lined up for Horace Mayberry in the future.
Then Professor Oscar Freeman enters his life and offers him a revolutionary procedure, which he has developed at his special nanotechnological laboratory.
Soon Horace discovers the laboratory is government funded, and the military have many uses for his eyes. His training commences and Captain Aubrey Jacksons is assigned to look after him. It is soon obvious to everyone that the potential uses for the eyes go way beyond anyone’s expectations.
However, danger is forever present for Horace, in the form of Rudolph Beckmann, who wants to steal the technology for his own uses.
Will Rudolph Beckmann succeed?
Will Horace fulfil his dream of becoming a special agent?
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this futuristic, action packed thriller. Its fast pace and intriguing technological possibilities left me hoping that Tony Thorne has many more adventures lined up for Horace Mayberry in the future.
July 29, 2014
Young Londoner, Horace Maberry was blind and could only dream about being a secret agent. That is until he acquired intelligent artificial eyes. His Nanotronic BioVision eyes allow him to see the world in a new way, and give him the ability to do more than just see, and he recruited in to a secret government agency. Yet other forces want this technology for far darker reasons. Five weapons have been stolen from the lab where his eyes were created. He finds he can detect them and communicate with them with his eyes.
Tony Thorne has created an interesting scenario for Captain Mayberry. However, there is a great deal of "telling" rather than showing in the book. The dialogue seems a bit stiff and doesn't flow as easily as it might. Finally, while there are many challenges for Horace, he seems to get out of them too easily in almost a contrived manner. Thus the book isn't a strong as it might otherwise be.
Tony Thorne has created an interesting scenario for Captain Mayberry. However, there is a great deal of "telling" rather than showing in the book. The dialogue seems a bit stiff and doesn't flow as easily as it might. Finally, while there are many challenges for Horace, he seems to get out of them too easily in almost a contrived manner. Thus the book isn't a strong as it might otherwise be.
August 5, 2012
If you are the type of person who hates adventure, action and excitement, do not pick up this book. If, however, you are a person much like myself that likes to be captivated by gripping edge-of-your-seat action, then you will definitely want to read this book. The action is non-stop, from the first paragraph to the last. I lost a little sleep reading Points of View because I simply couldn't stop until I know what happened next. It is a well-written tale, and one that grips the imagination. You won't want to miss out on this phenomenal tale.
December 28, 2016
Tony Thorne's "Points of View" is a standalone read. I don't usually read thrillers, so I don't have much to compare it to, but I loved it. It's a great read with lots of twists and turns. An interesting cocktail with two parts Walter Mitty, one part Jason Bourne, and three parts Inception! Did you ever see that Buffy the Vampire episode where she can't figure out if she's in the looney bin or not? This book has a similar vibe. Love it! Tony always has something interesting for me to read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews