Review: The General by Robert Muchamore

Title: The General

Author: Robert Muchamore

Series: Cherub #10

Publisher: Hodder

Publication date: 4th September 2008

Format: Paperback | 352 pages

Genre: YA

Goodreads

The world's largest urban warfare training compound stands in the desert near Las Vegas. Forty British commandos are being hunted by an entire American battalion.

But their commander has an ace up his sleeve: he plans to smuggle in ten Cherub agents, and fight the best war game ever.

My thoughts:

For those of you that haven't heard of this series before, it follows a secret organisation that uses child spies to get criminals locked away for a good long while. Of course, since children are involved, the characters get up to some crazy, hilarious stunts both during missions and at the Cherub campus. The General, mostly focuses on James and his sister Lauren as they test soldiers to the limits in a training compound in the middle of an American desert. 

I'm already a big fan of this series but this book just took the biscuit for me. I couldn't stop laughing for the life of me. The beginning of the book was great for more serious action with James' first mission, but after that went wrong, things just got a turn for the hilarious. I loved what went down in the training compound - it was a perfect mix of chaos, childish pranks and combat training. Muchamore's ability to keep reminding readers that these agents are still kids is brilliant.

I also enjoyed the great mix of characters that played a part in this story. James and Lauren are favourites of mine just because of their great relationship as siblings but the rest of the gang played their parts too and it led to some brilliant moments. The instructor Kazakov has definitely become a new favourite of mine because of his genius antics in this book. 

Nothing really comes to mind when I think about what I didn't like about this book. I suppose I would have liked to have seen a bit more of a fight between Dana and James when all that drama went down. It was over a little too quickly and James seemed to get over Dana awfully fast for someone who claimed to love her. I guess his heart's elsewhere.

Overall I loved this book and I thought it was a fantastic addition to the Cherub books. I'm looking forward to starting the next one.

 

My rating: 10/10

 

Robert Muchamore:

 

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Cherub:

 

1. The Recruit
2. Class A
3. Maximum Security
4. The Killing
5. Divine Madness
6. Man vs. Beast
7. The Fall
8. Mad Dogs
9. The Sleepwalker
10. Dark Sun
11. The General
12. Brigands M.C
13. Shadow Wave