Killer T is a near future dystopian story based around genetically engineered viruses and modded people.

While I did enjoy reading this book, I would have enjoyed it far more if it was half the length. The first half was an odd mixture of young teen insta-love that took less than a paragraph and very long drawn out descriptions of mundane things. To be honest it dragged.

The second half was so much better it was hard to believe I was reading the same book. The grim future was gritty and very interesting. Scarily plausible too.

With its ethical issues and the fears these can arouse, I felt sure this would be a good read for teenagers. However, I hope they don't find it as depressing as I did. Muchamore includes background details that help to make the ideas of a mutant virus and gene modifications believable but somehow his 'too happy' zombies are just not believable enough for me and some of the character's actions and speech just didn't ring true.. I can understand why he moves the plot ahead with 2 and 3 year time gaps but this tended to detract from the flow of the story..
Whilst I wanted to know what would happen to the main characters and feel this book would appeal to some reluctant readers, I don't feel this was Muchamore's best writing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hot Key Books for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Killer T is about a futuristic world where killer viruses and gene editing is reality and destroying life as we know it. The books main characters are street smart teens Harry and Charlie are really likeable, strong characters with interesting back stories.
A great young adult story that works well.

I haven’t read any other books by Robert Muchamore but will be seeking out more.

My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for this advance copy. The cover art is very appealing.

I feel this near-future dystopian novel is going to be a big hit with its target YA audience and also have appeal to those older readers that enjoy this genre. The concept of genetic modification and deadly, designer viruses is all too plausible.

Given this fascinating premise I am surprised that Muchamore didn’t present this as a trilogy that would have allowed deeper exploration of its social and political issues as well and giving his characters more room for development.

I did appreciate the slow start to the novel as it allowed time to get a sense of the world as it was and introduced Charlie and Harry. However, I did feel they seemed remarkably articulate and mature for a thirteen and fourteen year old. Yet as the narrative moved through time they seemed more in synch with their physical ages. I found I was more partial to Charlie, given the obstacles she overcame, than Harry, who went from a sweet, nerdy boy to a bit of an entitled brat for a while. I did care for them both and was concerned for their fates in such a volatile world.

I had not encountered Muchamore’s work previously and appreciated his ability to create a believable near future (even if the hyper-inflation seemed extreme), characters I cared about, and well-paced action sequences. Also, an interesting take on ‘zombies’. I would love to see this as a television series.

Harry, a lonely British teenager who has moved to Las Vegas, gets his photojournalistic 'break" with an explosion at the lockers of his school. Charlies lives in a trailer and having made explosives for a science project, makes her the main suspect. Circumstances makes them unlikely friends.

It seems this will be the story about Charlie's persecution and the repercussions. But then you realize that this attention grabbing premise is actually a backstory. We are actually dealing with an 'after the backstory' tale in a world of gene-editing with the scary backdrop of a dangerous virus. I love it when stories surprise you be morphing into something else, without losing its initial integrity.

The transition to this new scary world is gradual and I am glad for it, because Harry and Charlie are so darn readable. The relatable vibe of the narrative helps too. This reads as contemporary in the best way possible.

Questions of ethics and morality do arise, as we learn more about the gene-editing. Especially since it's being used not just for health purposes, but for vanity and 'happiness'.

Honest, surprising, and captivating, with the time jumps it reads like a few different books of an intriguing series, all rolled into one. It was not what I expected, but I so enjoyed it.

I liked the idea of this, but was disappointed by the execution - I found the characters incredibly 2D, which made it hard to really care what happened to them.

This is the dystopian future of mutant viruses, nightmare dogs, zombies and human DNA modifications.
Although this is not my preferred reading, and I am not the target audience, I found the storyline captivating, informative and a decidedly worrying thought for the future of DNA genetic engineering.
Maybe too much detail and too little action in parts which could be a turn off for the target audience, also the ending was a little abrupt. Without giving too much away….I am hopeful for the survival of one of the characters.

Really enjoyed Killer T, read many of Robert Muchamore's books when my children were growing up, used to read them to them and got addicted and had to read them all myself. This is a great intro to the world of DNA and genetics, interesting subject matter for younger readers to get there heads around. My only negative would be the big jumps in time which i guess were required to move the book along but a nice wander into the realms of SciFi for Mr Muchamore,

This book follows the lives and trials of two teenagers - Harry and Charlie. Harry has just moved to Las Vegas from the UK, is nicknamed Harry Potter and comes from a fairly privileged background, whilst Charlie is a girl living in a dirty trailer with a psychotic older sister and a brain damaged younger brother, and has already been in trouble with the law. Not a very likely basis for friendship but they do have some things in common and are both intelligent, determined and articulate.

The story cleverly develops over a number of years and we see the massive societal problems caused by unlicensed genetic modification as the technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, ranging from simple but unwise changes in wildlife, to humans with gorilla DNA to make them bigger and stronger. Obviously, a major theme of the book is the modified or enhanced diseases regularly being released which kill off a percentage of the population and cause massive societal changes - such as going through a sterilisation procedure before entering shop, waiting in quarantine for 7 days after an international flight, and always wearing a face mask outdoors (complete with Nike or Adidas logo!)

This book is aimed at young adults and the sudden time-jumps ("2 years later") are a little disconcerting but understandable, and each time segment highlights the changes that have occurred in Harry and Charlie's lives, the widespread take-up of gene modifying technology well beyond the ability of the authorities to police, and the resulting dramatic societal changes.

My only criticisms are that the narrative sometimes drops into exposition, and I felt some characters spoke in a manner well beyond their age - for example would a 5 year old boy really call someone a 'lumbering ape'?

I enjoyed Killer T and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys dystopian thrillers.

The book centers around Harry and Charlie, two teenagers who meet following a bombing at their high school. This is not the sort of book I would normally read, but its science-related plot had me interested enough to give it a go and overall I was pleased I did.

Without giving too much away, the story follows Harry and Charlie's relationship over time and the ups and downs of living in a world where genetic modification is an everyday occurrence.

I felt the book was a little slow to get going, but once hitting the second part it picked up and kept me interested through to the end with its various twists and turns. The central characters were all developed well and I found myself feeling for them as events progressed for both better and worse.

I liked the ideas behind this story, I thought that the scale of events was very clever. Much like with books like Handmaid's Tale, part of the intrigue is how quickly things can change or fall apart, in this case you follow the lives of these two characters as the world drastically changes around them. In this case it’s actually the pace at which technology changes crossed with the pace at which society ‘collapses’ that makes things even more interesting. Conceptually, therefore, this book was sound. I have a special place in my heart for stories that involve some kind of gene hacking (This Mortal Coil is still the best example I’ve found) because I think it throws up some interesting ethical and technological questions that can really stretch a setting to be even more detailed.

So what was my problem? Why did I end up giving this book two stars? I have to blame Harry, the male protagonist. When the story started I was pretty ok with him, the young and intelligent outsider befriending the girl who is unjustly in trouble was a little stale but I don’t have a problem with it in principle. However, as the story progressed he got more and more unlikable, to the point where I didn’t want to read his perspective any more because it was simultaneously testosterone fuelled bravado and also whining. I was taken right back to the moments where I got fed up with Cherub and I realised that Robert Muchamore may just not be the author for me. In the interest of being balanced, which is almost always my goal in a book review, I have to point out that I’m not averse to male protagonists as a whole, I don’t find them impossible to relate to, and I am sure that there are a lot of aspects of Harry’s character that younger male readers will relate to more than I did. I can respect the intended audience in this case. But I didn’t feel like a lot of the problematic aspects of Harry’s character were really called out? I felt like he wasn’t made to grow as a person, to learn and to develop, despite the huge time jumps in this story. Perhaps that was just my reading of it, but I would have liked to warm to him, and instead I found myself not caring.

Charlie I liked, Charlie can stay. I thought this was a great example of how the system can fail people, very fitting for the current climate. Had this entire book been from Charlie’s perspective I think I would have felt very differently about the story as a whole.

As I say, this book did some interesting things, it posed some important questions and I can see in my mind’s eye the exact type of person this was written for, unfortunately that person isn’t me. I needed more character development, more plot that wasn’t just characters making poor choices, more heart (because an insta-love romance that gets progressively more possessive does not constitute heart). I think this book had potential, and I think that it will be an enjoyable read for many, but I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it.

My rating: ⅖ stars

I received a digital advanced review copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Sadly I started and tried to persevere with this book, it’s well written, but just couldn’t engage me. Too many teenage characters for me, which doesn’t mean it wouldn’t appeal to others, but sorry, just not one for me.

At the beginning of the novel Harry is 14 and Charlie is 13, they meet because Harry is an aspiring journalist and one of his leads took him to Charlie, from there they formed an unlikely friendship.

I will be very honest, I almost stopped reading during the first "part", reading about a grown man making inappropriate comments to a 13 year old girl and licking her face is disgusting and I felt very uncomfortable, and again when the same grown man and an accomplice dragged Harry into a supply room and grabbed his genitalia whilst threatening him and his family.

This novel is spread over a fair few years
The second part of this takes place 2 years on, Harry and Charlie are still in contact and she has been released from Juvie on good behaviour, but there are conditions.
As she has no family she moves into Obama Independent Living accommodation and meets Brad- an 18 year old who lives in a room across the hallway.
I have to say I was not keen on a lot of the dialogue between Charlie and Brad- an 18 year old referring to 2 younger girls as "sluts" is just not ok, I also couldn't understand Charlies decision to have sex with him when she knows he has a girlfriend, she only decided it was a bad thing when she realised he was having sex with various women behind his girlfriends back.

Honestly there were quite a few occasions where I could have stopped reading this as I wasn't keen on the dialogue, at all, the 3rd part takes place a few years on, Harry had ended contact with Charlie when he realised that she had been sleeping with Brad, but gone was the awkward skinny boy with acne, instead he had taken a course of gene editing injections to alter his outward appearance and strength.

Despite having no scientific knowledge I did find the science aspects quite intriguing, and a little worrying- I mean just imagine if you could alter your genetic makeup with a few injections. And this is where the description on goodreads really started to make sense to me because for the first 2 sections (until Charlie meets Mango) I was confused as to what was going to happen.

It does baffle me how Charlie managed to avoid being arrested for years after her release considering how that was something she was initially worried about and wanted to live a normal life- trust me her life was anything but normal.

Towards the end I assume Charlie is in her mid to late 20s and she sort of has her life on some form of track, although she did go through an awful lot to get to where she is.
Harry had run a relatively successful website as a teenager but as he got older, the viruses got worse and the price inflation was ridiculous ($60 for a cupcake and $300 for a proper coffee) so that money didn't go very far in the end.
I feel like the ending was very open with a possibility of a sequel as there were still a lot of very dangerous Gene modifications and viruses being spread around and as Charlie said "The Fight goes on, right?"

All in all this had a very interesting concept and in the end I didn't dislike it, but I can't help but feel like there are huge sections that could have been left out, like some of the dialogue, as it just seemed to go on and on in some areas, and some of it just seemed a bit inappropriate or far-fetched.

An exciting and exhilarating insight on what our world could become. Muchamore delves brilliantly into the world of gene editing..

I know this book is aimed at teenagers but I expected characters with more depth and a more grown up style of writing. I requested this book because I liked the sound of the plot. It just did not deliver the way I thought it would.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

This dystopian YA novel envisages an all-too-real near future where genetically engineered superbugs are attacking the population, and laboratories can engineer your genes to enhance your body and mind.
Harry is an English, out of place student, at a Las Vegas school, what wants to be an investigative journalist.
Charlie is a girl from a poor background, who loves science, and unfortunately runs foul of a Las Vegas mob family, when she is accused of a bomb attack.
The unlikely combination of Harry and Charlie drive the story, and it’s really good to see a strong, feisty, intelligent female character.
The book is in several sections, each a few years apart, which I found disconcerting, but allowed the characters to mature, although it meant that some story lines are not developed.

However, it addresses issues that are very relevant to its’ generation of target readers, and in a way that I hope will make them question the ethics of some of todays’ science.

Thanks to Netgalley and Hot Key Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Hmmm… I'd never taken to Muchamore, trying one Cherub from the middle of the franchise's span and hating it, but this is certainly better. It's again a teen read, with a near-future Las Vegas the focus, as mankind develops new viral diseases, genetically modified creatures – and eventually human biological alteration, with technology available that's both cheap and powerful enough for almost anyone to have a go. But that's just context for most of the book, as we see our hero get big in the world of online local news publishing, and the girl he has his heart set on landing in juvenile prison when a bomb goes off at his school. Vegas is under the thumb of an evil Mr Big, and neither will get out from under that pressure quickly or easily.

And that's the problem here – this book is just far too long. Pluck any percentage you wish out the air and this could lose that, and not suffer. OK, when I thought in part two I could see too easily where the book was going there were still copious surprises and shifts for me to encounter – before being proven wrong – but boy. Added to the overwriting, and some awful exposition here and there, is the way Muchamore tries too hard to be down with the kids. It's reined in here from the Cherub days, but here and there he tries to narrate in the thought process of his characters – none more so than in the very first chapter. And I wish he wouldn't. It's the literary equivalent of granddad's wedding day dancing. It's a little awkward here, too, where he's clearly writing a teen boy's wish fulfilment story. Exposition, fitting-in-with-the-young, the wet dream aspect – all could be cropped. But with the compelling story, the basic set-up matched with the lengthy drama the two teens face, all being reasonable and then some, it's proven me wrong. The fault isn't with Muchamore, just with his editors. This is a perfect YA romance/sci-fi/dystopia mish-mash, just twice as long as it need be.

A huge thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy of this. I think Muchamore fans are in for a real treat with this, though I found myself having to check details on occasion.
The story sets off focusing on Harry and Charlie, very different characters but with a common interest. Their story begins set against an odd backdrop where the world is affected by some mutated virus and people modify themselves without thinking.
I have to say I found the timeframe hard to follow, and some quite major events seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. The idea was interesting, but I really can’t imagine some of those involved taking part in the way they did.
I’ll be interested to see what younger readers make of this. It certainly toys with some interesting ideas.

This book is brilliant! Fast paced and incredibly well written, the story leaps off the page and gets inside you like the ‘mods’ described in the book. I was engrossed in this and lost a whole day and night to the amazing world created and the moral and ethical dilemmas presented. I would love to hear more about this future world and hope there are more stories to come out of it. Thank you for writing this!

An interesting premise of a near future world where synthetic viruses and gene modifying rules. A pacy read with some quirky characters in Charlie and Harry though it's hard to really like them. It took a long time for Killer T to make an appearance which grated a bit though all in all this is a well researched, plausible story which will no doubt to its Y A target audience.