User:Jrothwell/Drafts/CHERUB
- This article is about the book series. For information about the organisation featured in the books, see CHERUB (fictional organisation).
CHERUB is a series of children's books by Robert Muchamore about children who are trained as MI5 officers on a secret campus, based on the fact that children are very unlikely to be suspected as spies. There are six books in the series, starting with The Recruit, and the latest instalment, Man vs. Beast, published in October 2006.
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Series[edit]
There are currently 8 books in the CHERUB series, with Robert Muchamore planning to write twelve books[citation needed]. The covers in the UK editions use a colour scheme that matches the CHERUB T-shirt system[citation needed].
The Recruit[edit]
- Main article: The Recruit (novel)
Main character James Choke goes through turmoil as while he is in a foster home he is spotted and recruited by the spy organisation, CHERUB. He learns about CHERUB and goes through a harsh program of basic training and his first mission. The Recruit was 2005 winner of the Red House Book Award.
- CHERUB: Class A (ISBN 0340881542)
James is sent on a mission to stop a drug dealer and to succeed he becomes friends with drug dealers and deals in drugs himself. When James comes close to using drugs his CHERUB career is put in jeopardy.
- CHERUB: Maximum Security (ISBN 0340884355)
James becomes an inmate of a high security prison, but finds that his mission becomes a little more complicated than he thought it would be when his accomplice Dave is injured in a fight and can't carry on with the mission.
- CHERUB: The Killing (ISBN 0340894334)
Somehow, a small time crook managed to get his hands on a fortune. MI5 needs to know how.
- CHERUB: Divine Madness (ISBN 0340894342)
When CHERUB finds a link with a religious cult known as the survivors with a eco terroist group help earth, the cops are desperate to dig up some leads (U.S. release, November 2006)
- CHERUB: Man Vs. Beast'
Every day thousands of animals die in laboratory experiments. Some say these experiments provide essential scientific knowledge, while others commit violent acts in order to stop them. James and Lauren Adams are stuck in the middle....
- CHERUB: 7 The Fall When something goes wrong in a mission James Adams is left badly beaten with no way of getting home meanwhile Lauren is going on her first solo mission all about human trafficking and when James gets home he finds that his nightmare is only begining...
- CHERUB: 8 Mad Dogs(To be published October 2008)
Characters[edit]
- James Robert Anthony Adams, formerly James Choke: The main character in the books, which mainly focus on his experiences. He does have anger management problems which do get him into trouble regularly. He excels at mathematics and is good in other subjects, although at the start he is not motivated to do the set work. At the beginning of The Recruit he is expelled from school. His mother dies and he is put in a foster home, where he is recruited to CHERUB by Kyle Blueman.
- Kerry Chang: James meets her shortly after joining CHERUB, shares a basic training programme with her and she becomes a very good friend, even sharing an on/off romance with him.
- Lauren Adams: formerly Lauren Zoe Onions: James' half sister, who is forced to live with her father, Ronald Onions, a violent cigarette smuggler, for the start of the first book. She is recruited to CHERUB later.
- Kyle Blueman: A key character in The Recruit as he helps to get James settled in at the care home, but he does have a few tricks up his sleeve so to speak. He's always out to make some money, but the only scheme that actually works is his pirate DVD business. And even that gets him in trouble when the little brother of Lauren Adams' best friend decides to switch the labels on a DVD so some kids end up with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre instead of the Harry Potter film they wanted to watch. In Class A, he admits to James that he is a homosexual, and, according to the official CHERUB web site, Kyle will get his first boyfriend in Man vs. Beast.
- Dave Moss: Dave is James's partner in Maximum Security and in The Killing. He is known as one of the coolest guys on the CHERUB campus, but is quite lazy. Rumour has it that he impregnated another member of CHERUB. He retired from Cherub after The Killing.
Staff at CHERUB[edit]
- Dr Terrence MacAfferty (colloquially known as Mac)Retires from his job as CHERUB chairman at the end of the 5th book. He is regarded to be very strange man. In Class A he has a reflective picture frame so he can see what's happening in the outside window; Lauren has written JAMES SUCKS in big letters. His punishments are half severe or half good, depending on optimism or pessimism (see Is the glass half empty or half full?. An example of this is where James left the campus to join his friends on a mission before basic training. As James had not been a problem before, he was not punished, but Kyle and Bruce were given one-month cleaning duties.
- Zara Asker is the new CHERUB chairwoman. She worked with James on Class A and was going to in the Killing but had trouble with her baby so former M15 agent John Jones took over. Like most staff she is a former cherub.
- Ewart Asker is Zara's husband and the harshest of controllers.
- John Jones; John Jones worked for the police and then MI5. In Class A he works with the cherubs and then decides to leave M15 and joins CHERUB as a mission controller. He worked with James as an MI5 agent in Class A and in Maximum Security. In The Killing and Divine Madness he is the mission controller.
Villains[edit]
- Brian Evans; Books: CHERUB: The Recruit, CHERUB: Divine Madness. He seems like quite a nice person, but as James finds out in his first mission, all that glitters is not gold as he turns out to be a member of the terrorist organisation Help Earth.
- Keith Moore; Book: CHERUB Class A. The head of a drug-dealing gang in James's second mission.
- Curtis Oxford; Book: CHERUB: Maximum Security. "If I'd seen you on the street, I'd just think you were a normal kid", but Curtis Oxford is far from normal. An inmate of the Arizona Maximum Security Prison, Curtis leads James towards Jane Oxford.
- Jane Oxford; Book: CHERUB: Maximum Security. Mother of Curtis Oxford, however, this is no ordinary dinner-cooking houswife, but a terrorist.
- Leon Tarasov; Book: CHERUB: The Killing. A car dealer who ran up large debts at a casino. He then steals from the casino to pay off these debts. When a reclusive eighteen-year-old computer expert finds out about this, one of Tarasov's clients murders the teenager.
- Joel Regan; Book: CHERUB: Divine Madness. The leader of a religious cult known as the Survivors, famed for their influence and brainwashing techniques. The Survivors turn out to be related strongly to Help Earth.
- Eleanor Regan; Book: CHERUB: Divine Madness. Eleanor Regan, commonly known as "The Spider", is considered to be the person with real power inside the Survivor's Ark (her father, Joel Regan, is now 82 and depends on an oxygen tube). She is the eldest of Joel's 33 children, the youngest being Rathbone (usually known as Rat), who befriends James and Lauren.
Trivia[edit]
- The books were written and inspired by Muchamore's 12 year old nephew. By the time he had finished writing it and the book had been re-read 7 times, printed and then finally released, his nephew was 17. Some of the events in the books like making lots of noise in corridors and doing teenage antics have been inspired by the things his nephew talked to him about.
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