Cherub Mission 1 - The Recruit

James lives with his mom and younger sister. The kids at school give him a hard time because his mom is way overweight. His mom runs a crime ring, so James is not hurting for money. James' stepfather comes over often to get cash from his mom. This latest time, he got mom drunk. That messed with her medications and killed her.

James ended up in an orphanage. His sister went with her dad. James was able to extract all the cash his mom had been hiding from her crimes. He starts hanging out with the wrong crowd at school. James is already in trouble to injuring a girl who teased him in his previous school, as well as a teacher that tried to restrain him. His new bad friends talk him into trying to steal some beer. In the end, they turn on him and get him arrested.

Little does James know that the Cherub organization has been watching him. They invite him to join their band of young spies. Boot camp is very tough. James teams up with a girl who failed boot camp previously, so she has a great advantage. James must push through learning to swim very fast. Somehow he makes it through boot camp, and with his partner, passes the final exam.

James gets invited onto a mission with him swim coach, who is years older than him. They infiltrate a group of supposed terrorists who are thought to be planning an attack against leaders of the oil industry. James needs to put his training to work to spy on the group. Turns out there are terrorists amongst them, but the intel was wrong on how they planned to kill the oil leaders.

CoCo

This book is subtitled "The Colorful History of Tandy's Underdog Computer". It chronicles the TRS-80 Color Computer from Tandy / Radio Shack. This was the first computer that my family owned. It was created in the 1980s among competitors like the Apple II, Atari ST, and Commodore 64.

The computer has a Motorola 6809 chip as the CPU. It had a cartridge slot on the side. Initially you could load and store programs from cassette tape. It ran at less than 1Mgz. The original version had 4k of RAM. You could upgrade to 16k or 32k. It had Microsoft BASIC in its ROM. There was an optional Extended BASIC that gave you better graphics, and a Disk Extended BASIC for floppy drive access.

My family upgraded to the CoCo 3 later on. This was a computer still based on the 6809 chip. There was more memory (128K by default). Although not all the memory could be accessed at once. The CoCo 3 had an enhanced GIME chip for graphics. Around the same time, an upgraded joystick was released.

The Rainbow Magazine was dedicated to the color computer. There was a host of companies providing third party support for hardware and software. The legion of Radio Shack stores carried the computer and official Tandy software. There was talk about a CoCo 4. But there were delays and not enough demand.

They Both Die at the End

Matteo is a recluse. He lives alone in an apartment. His dad is in a coma at the hospital. He has one friend that is a single mother. He gets a call that he is going to die today.

Rufus is an orphan. He is part of a gang. He wants to beat up the new boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend. His parents and sister previously died in a car accident. Rufus gets a call that he is going to die today.

There is a service for people who are going to die that allows them to meet up with other people. These two guys from really different backgrounds do meet and spend their last day alive together.

The title gives away the ending of the book. There is a nasty surprise towards the end of the book. It seemed out of place based on the background of the two characters that have been developed throughout the whole book. I give this book a thumbs down.