UPGRADE by Blake Crouch – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Upgrade by Blake Crouch
Published by Ballantine Books on July 12 2022
Genres: Adult, Science fiction
Pages: 352
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Even though the story didn’t feel as polished as his others books, Upgrade has some nail-biting action scenes and plenty of emotional moments.

Blake Crouch’s Recursion and Dark Matter were both five star reads for me, and so I was expecting and hoping to love Upgrade just as much. Maybe it’s because it just wasn’t as polished, tightly plotted or well written as the other two books, or maybe I’m more picky these days, but Upgrade—while highly entertaining—didn’t quite live up to its predecessors. Still, I did have a blast reading it, so for pure entertainment value it has my stamp of approval.

Logan Ramsay works for the Gene Protection Agency, a group that goes after people who are suspected of doing illegal gene editing. It all started with Logan’s mother Miriam who discovered and patented a DNA modifier called Scythe. Miriam was determined to find a way to modify crops and improve their output, hoping to solve the world’s food shortages, and so she concentrated on Shenzhen, China, developing a way to genetically change rice to be blight resistant. But something went horribly wrong, and instead of increasing the food supply, she ended up decimating it, plunging the world into a food crisis called the Great Starvation. Because Logan was helping her, he ended up taking the fall and went to prison for his mother’s crime. Now gene editing is illegal, but that doesn’t stop people from performing it under the radar, hence the need for the GPA.

One day on a raid, Logan and his team are surprised when a mysterious black box in the building they’re investigating suddenly explodes. Logan makes it out alive, but not before he’s injured by the shrapnel that come flying out of the box. Recovering in a hospital, Logan is given some grim news: he’s been infected by illegal DNA and now he’s under observation. Soon after, Logan begins to notice weird changes taking place in his body. He can remember everything from his past in great detail; his bone density has increased at an alarming rate; and even stranger, his DNA appears to be changing into something not quite human. When his estranged sister Kara makes an unexpected appearance and proposes an ambitious and dangerous plan, Logan finds himself running for his life. 

If I could describe Upgrade in one word, that word would be “uneven.” The first half of the book  is full of technical jargon and set-up and packed with characters—many of whom aren’t really important to the story. I found a lot of the action to be confusing as well. Logan finds himself “trapped” in a hospital not once but twice, as his genetic changes catch the interest of the GPA and other scientists who are afraid to set him lose on the outside world. I’m fascinated by genetics, but my poor brain could barely handle all the info-dumping and scientific details, not to mention many unnecessary passages full of unpronounceable words:

“My hunger—another sensory artifact that I was now blindingly aware was simply the serotonin (5-HT) and catecholamine neurotransmitters in my serotonergic neurons, intestinal myenteric plexus, enterochromaffin cells in the mucosa of the gastrointestinal tract, and blood platelets—telling me to eat.”

Clearly these paragraphs are meant to show Logan’s increasing intelligence, but still.

I also found the world-building to be thin, although I love the fact that the story is set pretty far into the future, at least that’s the impression I got. Some of his ideas were fascinating, like a futuristic Las Vegas with some creepy abandoned buildings, but there weren’t enough details to satisfy me. Also, odd things like planes travel at 95,000 feet (with no explanation as to why and how) and even some little details that jolted me out of the story, like a cop using the twirling finger gesture to tell someone to “roll down you window,” something that was common before automatic car windows were invented and a gesture that I would think has died out by now. I know these are nitpicky complaints, but they bugged me, what can I say.

But let’s talk about what I liked. Once you hit the 50% mark, the action takes off like a rocket and doesn’t slow down until the end. Crouch knows how to write exciting action scenes and he does a great job in Upgrade. One of the best sequences takes place in a high rise building, and I had flashbacks of one of my all time favorite action movies, Die Hard, it was that good!

I also loved the dynamic between Logan and his sister Kara, who are at odds with each other and want different things from Miriam’s upgrade technology. Logan and Kara spend most of the story trying to kill each other—Kara is after Logan and he’s hiding from her—so you can imagine how tense their scenes are. Both characters have been “upgraded” and are on equal footing when it comes to intelligence and physical ability, and watching them use those abilities against each other was thrilling and stressful. Add in the fact that they are siblings who used to love each other, and the emotions are running pretty high.

There is even more emotion surrounding Logan and his wife and daughter, who think he died in the raid explosion. You can tell Logan is horrified by the fact that he might never see them again and that the government is preventing him from telling them the truth. These scenes were simply heartbreaking!

Crouch also gives readers lots to ponder. Should scientists “mess with Mother Nature” in order to improve human life, or is it just too dangerous? Kara thinks that infecting the population with the upgrade will solve all our problems, but Logan knows differently and is the only one to stand between Kara and her misguided plans. Miriam created her upgrade to combat disease and starvation, both worthy problems to tackle, but Kara wants to take her mother’s discoveries to the next level, which might have disastrous results. 

After a thrilling (and yes, over-the-top and slightly far-fetched) conclusion, the story ends with a heartfelt epilogue that I really loved, the sort of epilogue that gives you hope for the future. I thought it was brilliantly written, and I wish the rest of the story had been at this high level of storytelling. But despite the story’s negatives, Upgrade is still worth reading and definitely worthy of my four star rating.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.