The Switch

CHERUB #10.5

by Robert Muchamore

Callum and Connor are identical twins, starring in their very own CHERUB story.

Genres: Thriller, Mystery, Espionage, Adventure

16 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Robert Muchamore was born in Islington, London in 1972. He still lives there, and worked as a private investigator up until 2005 and the critically-accepted release of Maximum Security.

The Hunger Games phenomenon is part of the huge YA / Children's book explosion that has grown, thanks to the British Rat pack of YA authors, Anthony Horowitz, Robert Muchamore, Mark A. Cooper and Charlie Higson. We owe much of the hunger games sucess to authors such as Robert.

Robert was inspired to create the CHERUB series by his nephew after he complained about the lack of anything for them to read. CHERUB: The Recruit was Robert's first book and won the Red House Children's Book Award 2005 in the Older Readers Category.

Following the last book in the CHERUB series, it was revealed that a trilogy would be released starting from August 2011 that will focus on a new set of CHERUB agents centred upon Ryan Sharma and also involve an sixteen year old Lauren Adams. The first book will be called People's Republic.

Check out the Hendersons Boys series. Henderson's Boys is a series of young adult spy novels written by English author Robert Muchamore. The series follows Charles Henderson, the creator of the fictitious CHERUB organisation.
CHERUB is currently being made into a TV series.

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining story here, but not long enough to have much substance to it. It is nice to have a focus on some of the more background CHERUB agents and, even though I don't remember their names having just put the story down, the twins were a fun pair to follow.

Now hear me out. The mission was quite clever - however there was absolutely no need for two identical twins to be involved. Someone could have hidden behind the ventilation grid and passed the bugs to the first agent. There was no need for a switch. I know this story would have been less dramatic without this element, I'm just saying it in case CHERUB are looking for ways to simplify their workload. 3 stars.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun little story, showcasing some background agents.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite clever, the way they used Callum and Connor to sneak surveillance into a building by having the twins switch places after the first one had been checked for bugs. Twins are clearly a valuable resource in an espionage situation, which makes me wonder why the first time this was shown was in a novella, and not within one of the main novels :/

Aside from that though, too short to really get much of a feel for things, and the twins issues with each other that started in the beginning of the novella both seemed rather unrealistic and blown out of proportion. I dunno *shrugs*

[Kireth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The twins start this story fighting over a personal issue, and as it goes on they do get a few sweet moments but overall don't develop that much. The whole short story revolves around a really cool moment towards the end of the mission that utilises the unique capabilities of twin child agents. The character McEwan makes an appearance and it is nice to see consistency in characters popping up across the series. Moving past these good things, Callum and Connor's speech really makes you stop to think how all CHERUB agents talk and whether it's appropriate for their age group!

[Mella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit too short to really get a feel of them, but it was cool seeing more of Callum and Connor.

[Mike Rymarz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't really see the point but hey ho