A man is nearly killed by a virus but after he recovers, he finds he is smarter, has a better memory, concentrates better -- basically an upgraded version of himself. Now he needs to decide if the virus will save humanity or destroy it. And decide if he can do anything about it.

This was a cool premise and the author did a good job with the tech aspects of the virus, but ultimately the book just didn't work for me. Maybe I missed something but I never understood what this upgrade was saving humanity from. But the biggest problem was I just never could warm up to the main character and without anyone in the book to care about or root for, I had to force myself to read though it.

After an incident at work, Logan notices he’s quicker, sharper, smarter. He soon realizes his dna has been hacked. The reason why goes back into his past and has major consequences for the future.

Blake Crouch is one of my favorite authors from his two last books. Unfortunately I didn’t love this one as much as Dark Matter and Recursion, but it’s still good and worth a read! Look… I know his books are science fiction, but the previous ones were pretty light with the techy stuff. This one was heavy with genes and dna. I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on. The action was still there. The relationships and emotions were still there. I just wish I understood a bit more of the background.

“Right and wrong are constructs born of human sentiment. Nothing but stories we’ve made up and assigned meaning to. They don’t correspond to any objective reality. The only thing real is survival.”

Upgrade comes out 7/12.

This book is such a perfect mixture of philosophical sci-fi action thriller. I have been a Blake Crouch fan for years, and this is officially my favorite of his. Logan Ramsay has been trying to outrun the guilt he feels for being the son of Miriam Ramsay for two decades. As an agent for the Gene Protection Agency, he tracks down geneticists who are likely to be editing genes which is now outlawed because of his mother’s gene editing disaster that lead to The Great Starvation. But when a raid goes wrong, Logan is infected with a virus that could drastically change his DNA. As Logan unravels who infected him, the story takes a deeply contemplative look at human nature, greed, selfishness, compassion and morality amidst a stunning sci-if background.

Add this to your TBR right now!

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher for this free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately this was a huge “downgrade” (get it?) from the last two novels I read by Blake Crouch. The main character was insufferable after he received the upgrade. If I could count the times he mentioned someone’s pulse rate or their micro-expressions, the number would be higher than his purported new IQ. Also, his newfound abilities just seemed to allow him to do and to know everything that will help him achieve his goals. Anything the main character needed, somehow could be achieved through what he remembered from a YouTube video he saw 10 years ago or a class from high school.

I liked the description of “New Venice” , or lower Manhattan, near the end of the novel. This was the only aspect we got to see of the world in Crouch’s not too distant future. I wish more of the story would have taken place in these derelict, watery alleyways.

I also liked the ending even though it seemed to be a stark contrast in tone to the rest of the novel (considering what MC did to his sister in the end).

Blake Crouch gives us another action-packed tale. He's an author I recommend slyly to folks who don't read science fiction. Try this speculative fiction, I say. And invariably, after reading one of his novels, I've made a convert.

So. Upgrade. It's set in the very near future, one just slightly more accepting of climate change. A GMO-produced famine killed a large swath of world population, and all genetic amendments have been banned.

Enter Logan Ramsey. He's both the son of the now-dead scientist who caused the Famine, and a government agent hunting down darknet rogue scientists. An ambush attack forces DNA edits into his genome, and what follows is a Jason Bourne-esque attempt to figure out truth, intent, and integrity.

Perfect for those who want more reality than Ready Player One and the science and thrills of the Martian.

Definitely going on many holiday gift lists!

4.1/5

Another great book by this author. I can't imagine where he will go next!! I don't usually read science fiction but if the author is Blake Crouch it is a definite yes for me. He writes about science that would be way above my head but he makes it, not easy to understand, but easy to read and I always feel like I know what is going on. That is what makes him a great author. My all time favorite is Abandon but the books he has published lately are amazing. One thing I have to say is I don't usually cry while reading sci-fi but this one did it.

I did write some notes while reading this book.

loc 368 - intensivist - intensive care specialist

loc 1135 - "Whoever did this to me?" I think I know!! No spoilers

loc 2624 - "Put simply: Our situation was fucked, and we weren't doing enough to un-fuck it."
I think we are now in this situation.

loc 4059 - Asian Giant Hornet!! A murder hornet - yes!

loc 4081 - "I bit the heads off the hornets." !!!! Gross

Blake Crouch please keep these stories coming. I can't get enough.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC of this book for my honest opinion.

Upgrade was my first book by Blake Crouch. Although I heard a lot about him and his books, I never got around to really reading one. So when I got the chance to read his latest work I couldn’t resist any longer and had to give it a try. And what can I say? I enjoyed it immensely.

I liked the concept and thought it was a unique idea for a story. At times the book was a little heavy on the science and I didn’t enjoy it as I had in previous books, but it didn’t disrupt the flow of the story too much so this is only a small point of criticism.

The characters were great, even though we don’t meet a lot of side-characters for long. But Logan was a great lead and I loved seeing his growth and character unfolding. How he started to see things and how he defined his own humanity was inspiring.

The story wasn’t thrilling at all times, but I never had the feeling it dragged along. It was just slow at some points which fit the tone of the narrative much better.

4½⭐

𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘙𝘊 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘉𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘺

Ɱ◎◎ĐႽ…
⬧Science Fiction⬧Gene hacking & splicing⬧Not your basic upgrade⬧Near Apocalypse⬧Like limitless but…

Upgrade is a mindf*ck of a story. The pacing is brisk, the writing is super smart, and the near-future world he has created kind of scared the bejeezus out of me because it felt all kinds of possible. And yet it still managed to have heart and be mind-blowingly interesting. This dude with his upgraded mind could read a book while simultaneously listening to another book and comprehend both of them, well actually he could do more than comprehend, he could recall everything that happened in them with complete accuracy. Freaking insane is what that is. I sort of wish I could do that.

“The future was here, and it was a fucking mess.”

Upgrade is a sci-fi thriller about a man who is genetically upgraded and tasked with saving humanity.

The plot is complicated and has many layers. The novel takes place in the future in which people are trying to survive the ramifications of “the great starvation.”

The plot is divided into three parts, all narrated by Logan, a man who works to put scientific criminals attempting to genetically engineer genes in jail while at the same time living with being the son of the scientist who caused the great starvation. He is a complicated and compelling character, but at the same time, he is cold and distant. At times, I didn’t fully connect with him.

Of the three parts, I liked part one the best. Part two slowed down my reading momentum. Part three brought everything together and posed some provocative questions about humanity.

This is a fast-paced, action-packed read filled with suspense, drama, and lots of science. There were times when the science was too much, but I think I understood the scientific threads more in this book than in Crouch’s other books, so that was a win for me.

There are many layers to this novel. It is more than about a man trying to save the world, and one can apply the events that occur to the current state of the world. The overall message is profound and impactful, especially in response to those lacking compassion and empathy for others.

“You can’t kill humanity to save humanity. Human beings are not a means to an end.”

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

A phenomenally brilliant mother provides a genetic upgrade to her son and her daughter, upgrading both their mental and physical abilities.

Now they must decide if this upgrade should be propagated throughout the species.

The decision is even more difficult in that it has become clear to both of these people that the world is rapidly approaching the tipping point for a climate disaster of epic proportions, and it seems unlikely that any steps will be taken to prevent it.

(Minor spoilers ahead)

It was going so well.

In the movie Limitless, Bradley Cooper eventually becomes well, limitless, and is able to use 100% of his brain until he finally becomes the President of the United States. Probably.

In the movie Lucy, Scarlett Johansson is also able to use the full potential of her mind until she basically becomes a flash drive. Or possibly the Internet.

So I guess I should’ve seen it coming that in this book, in which Logan is unwittingly subjected to an “upgrade” that unlocks the same potential as our dear friends Bradley and Scarlett, I was once again bound to be disappointed.

It’s a great premise, and it was great fun… until around the 80% mark where things started to get a bit messy, anticlimactic, and “preachy.” All of which I could probably forgive if the protagonist (spoiler alert) didn’t go and do exactly what he fought so hard to prevent throughout the entire novel. Well, he did.

I liked Dark Matter and I loved Recursion. Many people seem to love this book, but this one just wasn’t for me. However based on my strong opinions of it, I’d also venture to guess it’d be a great book club pick, so you can argue with your friends over it.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for a (brutally) honest review.

Thank you so much to Netgalley, Ballantine Books, and the author for access to an ARC of Upgrade. Dark Matter and Recursion were two of my very favorite reads last year, so I was ecstatic when I was approved for access to Blake Crouch’s newest novel.

Upgrade takes place in a near-future in which sea levels are rising, people are suffering from mass starvation, and humanity is on the brink of collapse. The story centers around Logan Ramsey, whose job is to investigate and stop scientists who may be participating in human gene editing. Early in the story, Logan becomes the victim of a gene edit that puts him in a position to potentially save humanity, but at a devastating cost.

Like Crouch’s previous novels, Upgrade is fast-paced and science-focused. The science is written in a way that makes sense for someone without a background in genetics, but I have no idea how plausible it really is. The near-future setting added to the believability of the storyline for me.

Logan is a likable protagonist. I didn’t connect to him as much as I’d hoped, but I did appreciate his love for his family. As the story began, he seemed to be fighting to overcome his reputation as a disgraced scientist and his childhood position as the “not-so-smart” son. These deficits made the changes he underwent throughout the novel seem even more stark. It also seemed like with each change, the amount of science information communicated increased while his outlook grew less emotional.

While I liked the book’s message, I didn’t love the way the ending was executed. I realize that there’s not really an efficient way to communicate what happens between the end of the main story and the epilogue without adding significant length to the novel, but I think it almost might have been better to leave things without a concrete closing. It may have made the story feel incomplete, but the ending is rather underdeveloped as-is.

Overall, I really enjoyed Upgrade. It was engaging and bingeable, but also raised a variety of ethical questions. These qualities would make it a great book club selection.

I will be posting my review to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and my Instagram account closer to the publication date.

Read 2 times

Full disclosure: I received this digital ARC from netgalley and Random House in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for this opportunity.

This is a contemporary novel only in the fact that the setting could be today. In fact, Crouch has set in in the near future in an alternate reality. Here, the science of genetic modification went severely awry. An attempt to control insects in rice production led to an event called The Great Starvation. Over 2 % of the world population died in the famine, and fifteen years later the effects are still resonating. Our lead, Logan Ramsay, feels intense guilt as he is the son of the scientist who caused the disaster. He accepts that Gene Research should be outlawed and has become part of an agency that tracks and captures renegade bio scientists.

However, the genie can never be put back in the bottle. In part one, Logan is the victim of an attack that leaves him with an fate unlike any other. His whole genome as been augmented, creating a new form of human. One who has a brain that can compute and compete with the best computers have to offer. Held captive by the very agency he worked for, and treated/tortured as a lab rat, he is relieved when Kara, his sister kidnaps him.

No riding off into the sunset here. Instead Kara too has received the upload. Indeed she has continued their mother's work, and now has a new virus. One that will change the whole course of humanity. The catch? Their enhanced brains are wondrous, and terrifying. Emotional centers have been repressed. It seems that logic without empathy equals cruelty. Is Kara enhanced, or simply the epitome of the evil super villain? Crouch is able to avoid the superhero tropes while he does offer a whirlwind suspense filled adventure for the reader. This chilling cautionary tale should be made mandatory reading for those who desire suppressing scientific progress.
Highly recommended.

I loved the concept in this book as well as the pacing. I was pulled in from the first pages. I feel this is such a relevant topic and information for what is going on in the world today. I love the writing of Crouch. I feel invested in the characters and feel very interested in the technology and issues plaguing them.

Another winner from Crouch! He always comes through with science fiction for the every person to enjoy (at least for me). We're dropped into a not so distant or unimaginable future with Logan Ramsey. Quickly it's understood that he has a conflicted past working as a geneticist with his mother. She ultimately turns out to be the "power hungry scientist" who wrought destruction on the world in her quest to solve one of natures problems. She disappears, and then dies, while Logan ends up serving prison time for her mistake.

That brings us to the present, which he now works for the agency who brings other geneticists to justice so there won't be any more gene editing. Of course, there will always be black market gene editing as with most things made illegal. This story parallels a lot of current issues in our world. In Logan's quest to bring down a person of interest he is exposed to an IED of sorts and ends up being injected with an upgrade.

His agency turns against him and takes him captive to study the upgrades. Without giving much more away, it turns into a race against the clock for more DNA upgrades to be unleashed upon the world. This book asks the big questions of, even if we have the technology - should we be messing around with it? Plus taking away people's right to choose their destiny, as sentient beings.

As mentioned in the beginning, this isn't hard to imagine a similar scenario in our future which makes the book even weightier and more horrifying/thrilling.

Thank you to NetGalley for an Advance Reader’s Copy of this book.

I really enjoyed this thrilling, fast-paced, near-future tale with a likable protagonist. It kept my attention throughout and kept me on the edge of my seat. A very fun title; I would happily read more from this author.

It's a page turner, but not deep. Crouch writes thrillers, which means fast-paced short sentences to advance the plot, but the sci-fi elements and other story details are just window dressing. Some paragraphs feel like copies from wikipedia articles to describe genetic markers and which types of bullets each gun uses. The characters are all boilerplate, the dialogue terse, and the overall theme gets muddied in the end.

We follow Logan Ramsay, an agent for the Gene Protection Agency who gets injected with unknown genetic modifications. These modifications make him stronger and smarter, with an IQ over 200.

It's incredibly hard to write characters smarter than you. With enough time, you can craft the difficult-to-write lines that appear to come effortlessly. I don't think Crouch even tried. The initial attempts to show Logan development were sophomoric - improving at chess and being *familiar* with the Fibonacci series. Other attempts (name-dropping the complex book Godel, Escher & Bach) get merely described as "I understood them easily", without any illustration of what insights were gleaned.

Onto the theme: Upgrade is an attempt to discuss what it means to be human. Genetic editing is under serious regulation (hence the GPA's role), and as his intelligence increases, Logan feels disconnected from humanity as he retreats into pure rational thinking. His actions are colored by his family's past, and he vows to not recreate their mistakes. Until he does. Purposefully. Ruining the whole point of his self-exploration.

99% of this novel is amazing. An above-average Joe gets infected with a substance that upgrades his software and hardware. He’s stronger, smarter and better. It must have been so hard for the author to show this super-intelligence in a way that normal readers can still understand and have them care about this superhuman and unrelatable character. Crouch did a great job with that. The plot is very well crafted, the conflict real and the characters (even the bad guys) likable. The last chapters are so suspenseful that it’s hard to stop reading. All that said, I wish I hadn’t read the very last page. I’m trying not to spoil things, so please stop reading if you don’t want to know more, but I must include it to explain why the book didn’t completely work for me. Without going into specifics, the whole ending feels like a hippy epilogue written by Marianne Williamson for a Coke commercial. It’s not that I don’t personally agree with the concept, it’s that I was expecting something completely different. I’m still giving this novel 4 stars because I mostly enjoyed it.
I chose to listen to this audiobook and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books!

First of all, thank you so much to Net Galley, the publisher, and author for providing a copy of this book for my review. Oh my goodness. I am so in love with this book. It blew me away. This is my first Blake Crouch book I have read but it will not be my last. This is a great book for sci-fi lovers as well as those who don’t typically go for that genre. I recommend not reading anything about this book before jumping right in. You won’t regret it! I wish I could give this book more than 5 stars! I can’t wait for this to come out soon. Thank you again to NetGaley, the publisher, and author.

What are the consequences of upgrading the human mind? Crouch’s take on this and whether increased intelligence would even benefit humankind is an action-packed exploration of what it means to be human. Five stars for the sci-fi aspects, but minus one for more action/violence than I prefer in my future worlds.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an ARC through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.