Great book from Robert muchamore
Different to cherub and Henderson boys but totally enjoyed a glimpse into out
R future with genetic modification
Loved it

Excellent book. Loved the characters and their development throughout. Well written, plausible and a little bit worrying!

Review by YA reader - age 12

Killer T was a great novel with a super storyline. The story is told over a long period of time, with time lapses between parts. Despite this, it was easy to follow and made sense.

The story is about synthetic viruses and genetic editing which a journalist and his friend get caught up in. The science was easy to understand.

There was some confusion about one of the characters, a lesbian scientist, at first, but once I worked out the relationship all became clear.

Anyone who enjoyed the Cherub series will love Killer T for its good action to story ratio.

With thanks to the publisher, author and NetGalley for the advance copy.

A dystopian tale that isn't aimed at me, so I'll be honest and say that I found this book hard to read and harder to follow, and it took me weeks dipping in and out to finish it! The main characters are disjointed and thrown together into a fight against the new technology that's gripping the world but could also be the end of it. I've no doubt it will have teenagers sitting on the edge of their seats, just not me I'm afraid.

What happens when anybody can have access to genetic manipulation technology with inexpensive equipment?

Killer T starts with some young teenagers who become involved with a school bombing. One of them manages to take iconic photographs of the aftermath, and another is blamed for causing it. The story follows these two characters as they get caught up in events much larger than themselves over the next decade or so, while the world around them begins to change due to that genetic manipulation technology.

It's something of a coming-of-age story, with some twists and turns that the reader might not expect. It has some enjoyable action sequences, and the main characters are well fleshed out.

My biggest problem was with the Big Bad in the novel. That person felt too much like a one-dimensional character with no real motivation other than 'I'm bad, because I'm bad.' I would have appreciated a little more reason behind why this person acted in the way they did. Our two main characters are drawn so well, it would have been nice to apply the same brush to the villain of the piece.

It was also a little difficult to tell whether this book is aimed at young adults. As it begins, it certainly feels that way, but as it progresses into the main characters' twenties, it feels a bit harsher and more aimed ad full adults. It wouldn't have stopped me from giving it to my kids (when they were younger), but the tonal shifts seem a little strange.

All that being said, I still enjoyed the book. One of the twists disappointed me, but then life doesn't always work out the way you want it, and I can't really fault the book for that.

I must admit,I read a lot of dystopian fantasies,so it came as quite a surprise for me to find this book so addictive. I loved the fact that there was not only one man-made virus but that there were also synthetic animals to distribute them. I also found it interesting how,with the world crumbling and people dropping like flies,that the author managed to find and create something good- the ability to create healthier humans.
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I also enjoyed the odd way this book was set out. Unlike common novels, it was set over a time period of about ten years,each part beginning in a new year. I found this style utterly captivating,and hope to find more books like it. The reason I found this method so effective was how it helped me see how the main characters grew. It helped understand them better,knowing that their struggle was not something that would be overcome in their lifetime.
Contains spoilers
The character development in this novel really was outstanding. Charlie really did become an amazing young woman. She stared off as nothing more then trailer trash,and ended up helping rebuild her society. And then there is Juno,who went in the opposite direction. I really feel her character added to the story,to say you can be a survivor and still have no future.

I have to say,as much as this book was written stunningly,it did have one fatal flaw-no pun intended. In this book,there was quite a bit of death. And I think this book would have benefited from Charlie being more upset about this. And Harry for that matter. The death of Matt,Juno,Rosie and Vert all seemed to be completely overlooked! They were not even mentioned once after their passing. This left me with no closure and a real sense of loss.

The ending to this could not have been more perfect. It was truly beautiful to see that Charlie had been able to have a child that was Harry’s even after his tragic death. I also loved how on the last page Charlie admitted it was always going to be hard without Harry,but she knew she had to go on,just as the rest of the world. I also like how there were a few subtle words saying that there was still a chance of another outbreak. This gave the book a feeling of realism to it.

Killer T by Robert Muchamore
Killer T is a stand-alone novel by Muchamore, set in the near future, and although I have read some of the CHERUB series I hadn’t read anything of his in a while and was excited to read this book.
Killer T is a synthetic virus that has been used by terrorists as a weapon resulting in a major change in civilisation. Society has broken down, with many people being effected by Killer T or gene editing, which has become the society norm.
The book opens with a bomb going off in high school, which is the point we meet Harry and Charlie- the main characters in the book. Running alongside the action and drama there is their love story. The story spans over 10 years and is split into 6 sections. The length of the gap in the timeline between sections are shown as chapter headings and initially, I really liked the time jump between the sections as I thought it allowed the story to fast forward over anything tedious. However, after awhile, I found it disconcerting and stopped the full development of the plot and characters.
I thought the first half of the book was brilliant – really exciting, original and compelling. I just wanted to carry on reading the book regardless of what I should have been doing! For me, however, the second half of the book just fizzled out. It lacked the excitement and suspense of the first half.

That cover is so beautiful and I'm not gonna lie but this was the main reason I picked it up, and I'm so glad I did. The action is very well written and will keep you on edge I can't wait to read more from this author and after this I will be looking out for more books from him. I would highly recommend it.

Muchamore can write action.There's no doubt about that. And he knows how to choose a compelling plot; the idea of back street gene enhancers holding the world to ransom is very intriguing and throws up a lot of questions around morality and ethics. Unfortunately, the execution leaves something to be desired in this case.

The first time skip kind of makes sense; nothing much was going to happen in the interim anyway. The second surprised me. After that they were just jarring. I couldn't connect to the characters, because every time I got to know them we skipped some time and they'd changed in the interim. The events we'd missed were always neatly filled in, the plot didn't suffer, but the emotions did. There was no real connecting story, unless you count Charlie's sister, who barely featured in several of the sections. Instead there was The Prologue - Now SNor Is Around - Now It's Killer T - Psych, It's Something Else - Now Everything's Over Very Abruptly.

It's not a bad book by any means; I kept reading to see what happened next, and I'd read more set in this world. But from Muchamore, I expect a lot better.


Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.

I've read a lot of Robert Muchamore's Cherub books and always enjoyed them. His realistic teens in spy situations have been flawed and human, make mistakes, but always have you rooting for them to succeed in the end - especially against Mr Large, that dick. Although Muchamore has written other non-Cherub books, this is the first that I have read. Focusing on a near-future where gene editing technology has become rife, it promised to be an interesting and engrossing book.

There's no doubt that this book was compelling. I started reading it one evening and stayed up far past my bedtime, turning pages incessantly, desperate to find out what happened next. I eventually had to give up as my eyes started to close by themselves, and spent the next day at work itching to get back to reading. Charlie, the female lead, is a great character. The world seems stacked against her, and you can see how easily she gets sucked into a life of scrappy criminality, because there didn't really seem to be any other options open to her. But Harry was less likeable, and therefore less enjoyable to read about.
The book is broad in scope, told in six parts, with time skips between six months and three years between sections, meaning the time between the first pages of the book and the final pages is more than a decade. It was quite disconcerting to have such a choppy interaction with the two main characters, and I felt like it negatively affected the reader's connection with them. Relationships were developed and broken off-page, and therefore my support for those relationships was lacking.
While the story was very interesting, the broad scope and development of gene editing technology meant that time skips were necessary, but that led to a lack of actual human connection with the characters. As well as that, with Harry being a pretty unlikeable character from midway through the book, I never really warmed to him enough to let his entitled, jerkish reaction to mid-plot events slide, or forgive him for it in the end.
The last thing which really bothered me was the use of language in the book. The words handicapped and retarded were scattered through the book without any acknowledgement that they're outdated and no longer acceptable in modern usage. For a book which was meant to be set in the near future, with a secondary character with disabilities, I was really surprised at this, and found it quite jarring.
Overall, this lacked the charm of Cherub for me, but was certainly a demonstration of Muchamore's ability to write a plot that sucks you in and refuses to let go.