Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch's newest book, Upgrade, was released back in 2022. It has become a New York Times Bestseller and is an Amazon Editor's Pick for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. It was also rated One of the Best Books of the Year for 2022 by both Time and She Reads. It deals with death, blood, gun violence, medical content, grief, vomit, injury detail, and an epidemic.

Logan Ramsay takes part in a raid on a secret genetics laboratory but finds nothing except a homemade explosive designed to shred his hazmat suit. He wakes up after the explosion and he feels no different, all of his tests come back normal. And that remains the case for a few weeks. But all of a sudden, his reflexes are better. His bones ache in a way he hasn't felt since he was going through growth spurts as a child. He can read a book in record time and not miss any part of it. In fact, his memory is much improved. He can remember... everything. It seems that someone has given his body and his mind a bit of an upgrade. Or rather, not just someone. His mother, who was once regarded as a top mind in the scientific community, and who is responsible for killing millions of the world's population with DNA sequencing. He also thought she had died years ago. And she doesn't want to stop with Logan, she wants to upgrade all of the world's population. Or everyone that's left, anyway.

I love an author who can write two stories that are so fundamentally different from one another and Blake Crouch is a great example of that, if I'm judging by the two books I've read of his. Like Dark Matter, this book deals with new science and the ramifications of the hubris of mankind, but Upgrade does that on a much bigger scale and in a completely different way. I found the plot to be quite compelling and it kept me engaged for the entire time I read it. And the setting was quite interesting, I liked hearing his take on what a post apocalyptic world would look like. Not too different than what we have now, but with more meat substitutes. I did think the emotional factor in this book was different and the ending hit me harder, but I liked the ending more over all. I thought Logan was a very relatable character in some ways. In other ways, he's not meant to be relatable at all. But this is a very plot focused book and we didn't have a ton of character development in this one either. I did find this to be a bit confusing at times since there were a lot of gene names being thrown around, but I learned to stop paying so much attention to them because they're really not that important as long as you understand that his DNA has been changed and it's causing his mind, his body, and even his humanity to change as well.

I'm giving Upgrade by Blake Crouch a 4.5 out of 5. I really enjoyed this one and will definitely look into more Blake Crouch in the future, but I think I need a bit of a break before I plunge into another one.

For more from Blake Crouch, check out https://blakecrouch.com/

Pairs well with a cranberry orange scone and understanding your own limitations.

My favorite quote: "And the algorithms knew us better than we knew ourselves."

Review of Dark Matter by Blake Crouch