Podiobook summaries by Doug Kress

Doug Kress, trivia guy for Slice of Scifi and podcaster in his own right, recently created these brief summaries of a few podiobooks he's been enjoying:

• 7th Son [Book One: Descent] by J.C. Hutchins - story about a guy that was cloned 7 times, and the clones were implanted with the guys memory up to the age of 14. The original guy, "alpha," was told right away about the cloning, but none of the clones knew they were clones until they're all brought in many years later to track down alpha, who has killed the President (no, not Bush) and done other bad stuff.
• How to Succeed in Evil by Patrick McLean - this is more of a novella, but it won some awards. It was about comic-book style villains, and how stupid they can be. It centers on one guy that consulted with them until he can't deal with the level if ignorance and egos on both sides of the fence (superhero-wise), and decides to become a super-villain himself, to do the job right.
• Earthcore by Scott Sigler - This novel shows violence and brutality at it's finest, when a company uncovers the largest platinum find in history, only to find it guarded by some very unsavory creatures.
• Ancestor by Scott Sigler - The race for genetic research is at full speed, until a company accidentally creates an airborne virus that wipes everyone out. The government succeeds in shutting down all other companies' research efforts but one - a company right on the edge of creating a creature with human-compatible organs by finding genes reaching way back into our ancestry. However, nobody considered what form this creature might take.
• Nina Kimberly the Merciless by Christiana Ellis - cute story about a barbarian princess who beheads suitors that bore her. She goes on a quest for a quest, befriends a dragon and uncovers a plot against her along the way.
• Singularity by Bill DeSmedt - Russians discover that the Tunguska explosion of 1908 was really a quantum singularity that slammed into the Earth, and continues bouncing around for the next 100 years in a slowly deteriorating orbit of the core. It's only a matter of time before the motion slows to a stop - and nobody wants a tiny black hole sitting in the core of the Earth. Very few people believe the wild theories that the meteor strike could even be a singularity in the first place. However, one group comes up with a few uses for a contained black hole, and proceeds to attempt it's capture...
• MOREVI: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana by Tee Morris - A pirate fantacy, where mid (16th?)-century pirates discover a rift that caries them to another world - Morevi - where he makes friends and plenty of enemies while establishing trades and pirating ships.
• Spherical Tomi by Jack Mangan - A somewhat short, very cyberpunk book about a girl that codes and pilots drones in a post-war universe still torn by turmoil. She finds herself allied with both sides, wile considering double-crossing both as well.

I think we've talked about most, if not all, of these books before. But I liked Doug's descriptions and thought that a few of you might as well...