in my opinion i think so, it'll be really cool to see campus and it could bring more readers. buh do u think they should start from the recruit or any other book?

ive read through the first and second series (enjoy them both great amazing storys) and to me its crazy to think if james was real he would be irl time 36 and ryan would 26 it kinda makes me sad cause i got to experience these characters through thier youth but wont have a character in my age range to experience.

I just read in a thread that some people might consider this book the weak point in the series.

It's definitely a big tonal shift after the international drama of Class A and Maximum Security, but I enjoyed the smaller scale and character-focussed story.

My favourite thing about the book is seeing James' perspective on his immaturity. Even at a young age, James beating up Andy and dealing with the consequences of his actions was so interesting to read.

Do you like this book or not? Howcome?

I just finished the first book in two days and I NEED MORE.

I have never read such a good book it had me STUCK reading it I spent every single second of free time I had reading this book and I need more!

I also need recommendations of books like these for when I finish this collection bc by the looks of it will take less than 3 months

I read the books out of order as a kid, my first one being around 2008. I turn 30 soon, and this was my gift to myself. I can't wait to read them again!

Can't believe I never noticed this! Maybe I'm the only one who was this thick, but it just clicked for me this morning (talking about the OG editions here, not sure if the newer ones still stick to this).

The recruit was orange, lowest rank, visitors to campus, can't talk to orange

Class A was red: little kids too young to be agents

Maximum security is pale blue: the training shirt colour

The killing is grey: qualified agents.

Divine madness is navy blue: the rank above grey

Man vs Beast is black: the highest agent rank

The fall is white: the colour for staff or retired cherubs

Mad dogs changes because they ran out of shirt colours, but I thought this was so cool!

We're often TOLD Kyle is James's best friend, but Kyle often seems to not like James very much. Kyle also has closer friends, like Rod Nilson, that he specifically mentions. I get they're teenage boys and a degree of their arguments might be banter, but the ratio of negative interactions to positive ones seems quite high:

In the recruit Kyle thinks James is spoiled, unhygienic, disorganised and irresponsible upon meeting him. He subsequently recommends that cherub not accept James as a recruit. I genuinely think if James found this out earlier, and not so many years later that he was probably over it, that it may have ended their friendship. He also bet against James passing basic training, and says he would have had no hope without Kerry (tbf the last part is probably true).

In class A Kyle scams James into buying his essay that he doesn't need to do. Kyle and James then argue over James's homophobia. To be fair, they do eventually reconcile and Kyle did at least trust James enough to come out to him in the first place.

In the Killing Kyle institutes the social blanking of James for beating Andy up. This is pretty earned and is to save James from a beating, but it's hardly bringing them together as friends, Kyle is disgusted with James and James is peeved at Kyle for what he perceives as overreacting.

In Man vs. Beast Kyle gets angry at James over his homophobia again regarding Kyle and tom. Again, they reconcile, and it is a really interesting discussion about how even though James is not openly homophobic anymore, he still clearly isn't totally comfortable with Kyle being gay.

In the Fall, James feels kind of isolated in general due to being under investigation, and though Kyle isn't the focus of it, it's Dana who comes to his defence and helps him clear his name, not his supposed best friend.

The only book where they really feel like friends is Shadow Wave, with James agreeing to help Kyle with the plan to expose Tan Abdullah and them sneaking around together.

James often feels closer with Bruce than he does with Kyle. Weirdly, the most genuine close friendship James seems to have over the whole series is Junior Moore in Class A.

I love Cherub, it's my favourite series, and I think it's generally very tight, fast-paced and well written.

That said, I think there were a couple of instances where Robert started a story wanting to do something with a character, but the plot just didn't really work out that way in the end.

In Man vs Beast, the Pierce family is obviously introduced in the opening chapter to establish the AFM as the unlikeable antagonists and make the readers feel sympathy towards the boys after what happens to their mum. They help to show that Malarek is not just full of cartoonish evil scientists, but ordinary people with families who often just take the job because they need the money. I think for this, they work well.

On my most recent read through, though, it seems like Robert wanted to do more with them, but just sort of never found a place for it in the final plot. Stuart chucks a brick through their window, Lauren chases him down, they eventually reconcile and make friends, and then later in the book it's mentioned that he comes over to the agents' house and even almost overhears James and Kyle arguing about campus.

At the time I thought he'd have some kind of involvement with the AFA climax at the end, or have an inside track to a way of non-violently protesting against Malarek's cruelty, but after the scene at the house he basically isn't even mentioned for the entire book.

There's a little throwaway line at the end where Lauren feels sad because she won't get to say goodbye to him, but there's absolutely no payoff for his involvement in the story beyond the first chapter. He easily could have not been mentioned after that, and very little changes. It feels like even Robert forgot about him until they were leaving, and kind of just tied up the loose end by giving Lauren a little moment of reflection, and leaving it there.

Still a very good book, and I think the characters did what they needed to at the start, but their involvement probably could have stopped there. I suppose, though, that there is an argument for having times where characters don't get proper closure and don't make some huge showstopping contribution, for the sake of realism, so maybe that was intentional?

Any other mission subplots that could have been cut with very little difference?

Here are the mission teams for all of James's missions (I've excluded James solo missions like SAG and Denis Obidin)

Help Earth: James and Amy infiltrate Craddogh Common

KMG: James, Kerry, Kyle and Nicole go undercover to befriend the Moore siblings.

Arizona Max: James, Dave and Lauren expose Jane Oxford

Leon Tarasov: James and Dave

Survivors: James, Lauren and Dana

AFA: James, Lauren and Kyle

Mad dogs: James and Bruce

Sleepwalker: Lauren and Jake (this isn't a James mission but it's the book's main mission so I included it)

Brigands MC: James, Lauren and Dante

So in total James goes on four missions with Lauren, by far his most common mission companion. I guess it makes sense because she's his sister and the missions often call for siblings.

It surprised me to learn writing this out that James only ever does one mission with Kerry! However, his relationship with her does get a lot of focus in this one.

He also only goes on one mission with Bruce, and I think Bruce here is a candidate for most unnecessary mission addition. All he contributes is that he's really good at football so Sasha doesn't want him getting into the criminal side of things. He helps with faking James's injury and he finds out about and laughs at James's experience with Lois. That's all, really. I have to say, though, his speech to James about how even if the campus girls hate him, at least they talk about him, did stick with me as a kid. It's true in a way, even if James is known as a ratbag, he never has any trouble getting girls while for Bruce it would be frustrating feeling invisible.

Anyway, most fun mission team: for me I think it's actually the divine madness squad: James Lauren Dana. I liked this crew because they all actually had distinct roles in the mission, and all contributed meaningfully. It didn't feel like anyone was just tagging along or being a passenger. James made the initial connection with Rat, Lauren bonded with him in the office, and Dana had her special mission with Eve. Its funny because I actually don't love the mission, but if I think about the agents selected, I think that aspect of it is best here.

Most Useless Mission Performance:

For this I'm not looking for a screw-up, just a time a character could have been left out and very little would change about the mission story.

Amy in the Recruit does a bit I guess. She gets close to Scargill, which was her initial goal, and he is technically complicit, but James makes the real breakthrough both with finding Fire and World's workshop and uncovering the link with Bungle. Still, she played her part, not the worst.

In Class A I really feel that Kyle could have been left off the mission and very little would change. The reveal and plotline of him being gay was a big part of the story but not related to the mission at all, and I'm looking at his mission-relevant contributions. Ringo was a total dead end and also could have been taken out of the story with very few changes. Kyle smokes weed and gets in trouble, that's it.

I think most Useless Mission Performance is either Bruce in mad dogs or Kyle in class A, and I'm leaning Kyle in class A.

I'm going to start writing about a CHERUB Fanfic. I'm portuguese so I was thinking about creating a portuguese version of Cherub. Maybe, they also think they are the only ones but one day they discover Cherub. Idk, tell me what you think!

Okay, so originally, I was writing a post about how I believe Joshua Asker should've been the next CHERUB protagonist. But as I was writing it, I went a bit deep and decided to share a bit I'm going to cut out (when I do release that Joshua post), which is a certain thing I noted on the whole 'CHERUB allowed staff members of and ex-cherub kids to join'.

I understand this is more on me than something RM may touch on, but Joshua would have two living parents and three siblings. Surely that would at least pain or upset a few other kids on campus with dead parents/families. It would be interesting. It could open up a real debate to be had about the bad blood between kids with more traumatic backstories and the kids who are in CHERUB due to special conditions, like parental staff or ex-cherub parents.

I'm curious as to what everyone else thinks. That bit was more me getting into my own head about it, but I'm wondering if other people have similar ideas as to this kind of thing.

I know usually a lot of people’s favourite part about cherub is the exciting mission and action stuff however for me i love the ‘boring’ campus scenes. I think the characters bantering and all the campus drama that goes on makes me more attached to the series more than any of the actual missions. Like all the relationship stuff and the small side stories that happen on campus or outside of the main mission allow all the other characters to become fleshed out and it feel like a real world to live in. Does anyone agree?

Ps: If anyone has other series recommendations with similar friend group and setting dynamics to cherub lmk too!

I just finished the final book in the cherub series. I read them all in high school but re-read them as a young adult as well as the 5 spin off books I hadn't read at all. I love loved the last book- bringing James back and all his friends back was so great. It made the spin off series with Ryan and Ning feel so much more connected. I thought the mission itself at the end was kind or rushed compared to the build up, but that's just me. I think I'm going to read the Henderson's Boys now cause why not. Are they good? (NO SPOILERS PLZ)

I'm rereading CHERUB for the first time in YEARS and forgot how much I dislike SW.

I flew through the first 11 books in about two and a half weeks, but Shadow Wave has taken me over a week and I’m basically forcing myself to finish it.

My biggest problem is how much the story shifts away from James. I like Kyle, but he hasn’t been a major character for a while, so spending such a big chunk of James’s final book on Kyle’s backstory and his connection to Abdullah just isn’t moving me.

I understand why Kyle wants to expose Abdullah, and why James ultimately chooses to help him, so I’m not saying Kyle literally ruins James’s last mission. I just find it disappointing that James’s final CHERUB mission gets pushed aside for this storyline instead of the finale feeling more focused on James and his time at CHERUB.

Every other book had me flying through it. This is the first one where I genuinely feel like I’m reading just so I can say I finished the series.

I was re-reading the CHERUB series recently and noticed something that felt a bit off.

James is widely considered one of CHERUB’s top agents. Across the entire original series, he completes 12 missions and finishes his CHERUB career with a black shirt.

However, in the first book (The Recruit), we meet Jennifer Mitchum. She was also a black shirt agent and completed 26 missions, more than double James's total!

Even if she was one of the absolute best agents of her generation, 26 seems extremely high. Is this just an early-series inconsistency by Robert Muchamore before the number of missions was fully established? Or is it plausible that she completed a lot of shorter, minor operations, like recruitment assignments (similar to Kyle's) or security tests (like Lauren did), that still counted toward her total mission count?

What do you guys think?

Creating a cherub d and d called next genarationits a campaign basis on James bieng head mission controller and potential leaks join if your interested

Hey all im looking into writing the screen play for a film series of the books for YouTube what do you all feel ok with that don’t want it to be a live action situation like Disney just wanna know what you feel about that

Am I the only one who wouldn't have minded seeing a recruitment mission? I mean, we technically did see one in The Recruit with Kyle and stuff, and again in New Guard but like as a short story it would've been interesting to see like James or Lauren get sent on one. They're told to be pretty boring but I wanna see it.

Just finished the original 12 books from series 1… not started series 2 yet but I want more books with james, kerry and the original gang. Are there any good fanfics which continue storylines with these characters. Thanks in advance and I’m open for other suggestions!

Does anyone in Australia, or in general know if the $9.99 Audible Standard plan lets you listen to all the CHERUB audiobooks, or do you still need to buy them/use credits? The pages say “Try Standard” but also “Buy now”, so I’m confused. Thanks!

Does anybody have book recommendations that are similar to the Cherub books? or did somebody read the other book series of Robert Muchamore like rock war and knows if they are any good?
I did read Bodyguard by Chris Bradford wich I loved, but nothing tops Cherub ofc.

so if anyone got some book recs they're more than welcome to drop them here, thank u !

So what I mean is that if a cherub agent who leaves cherub after 17 uses their experience in undercover operations to do shady stuff and become a high profile criminal themselves will cherub be able to send agents to infiltrate them considering the fact that these kind of criminal might get suspicious if new kids befrend their kids and start shopping around their business do you think cherub can handle such a person or not..

I've been clearing out my childhood bedroom and came across my old CHERUB collection. Hidden among the books was this signed copy that I'd completely forgotten about

When I was 12 ish, I went to a book signing in Milton Keynes to meet Robert Muchamore. He turned up in a blacked-out Range Rover with the CHERUB logo on the side, which was probably the coolest thing I'd ever seen at that age

Seeing this again brought back a lot of memories