7th Son

This is a podcast novel written and read by J.C. Hutchins. It is amazing how the more technology changes the more people's tastes stay the same. The podcast novel is basically a reinvention of the radio serial that was popular before the advent of television in the 1950's. The popularity of podcast novels such as this one demonstrate that despite the increasing use of new technology (such as podcasting) people still essentially want to be entertained with a good story. 7th Son is a science-fiction story that is released on a weekly basis. It is marketed as being the first book in a trilogy. There will be 24 chapters in total and at the time of writing the author has released chapter 22. The premise of the book is that seven men are kidnapped and find out that they have been cloned from the original John Michael Smith. The 'seven sons' have been called together by the government to help the organisation find John 'Alpha' (as the original) who has escaped from the government compound with the technology to plant his personality into unsuspecting victims. The book is read by the author with some variation in his voice for different characters. The audio quality of this podcast is very good and the author reads well and brings the story alive with his voices for the different characters. The story, indicated by the title, contains many characters. At first this is difficult to follow, however by around the fifth chapter the author provides a recap of the key plot points at the beginning of each episode and gives a summary of all the main characters on his website. The initial few chapters focus quite heavily on the theory of cloning and the science behind this. This is necessary for the plot of the story and I was able to follow most of what was being discussed in the opening chapters. I come from a humanities background so if I can understand what is going on I would think that the average listener would too. While the plot of the story is interesting and engaging, what makes this story for me is the character development within the story. The seven John Michael Smiths (copies of the original) have all taken different paths in life and as such have quite distinct personalities. One is a priest, another a soldier, and still yet another a musician, to name a few. These characters and their development give rise to questions about nature versus nurture and the potential to mould people to a certain way of not just thinking, but actually being. This is a very well produced podcast that provides a well told story that is relevant on many levels; not least of which that it is very entertaining. Podcast Rating: 9 out of 10 To subscribe to the RSS feed of this podcast click here.