Upgrade
by Blake Crouch
Indie Author: No
Kindle Unlimited: No
Publication Date: 7.12.22

Genres: 
Technothrillers
Genetic Engineering Science Fiction
Science Fiction Adventures

Page Count: 352 Pages

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Synopsis:

“You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope
for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

Sabetha’s Review:

 5/5

WOW, what in the ‘relevant to our current state of humanity’ did I just read?!

I already know this book is going to be one of my top reads for 2022, and it’s only February.
I am going to do my best to review this book without spoilers, but the TL;DR of it is, even if “near future – scifi” isn’t in your normal reads, I highly recommend this book. The way it tells a near future story, while dropping bigger picture ideas for the reader to ponder on is masterful.

I am in awe at the profound themes, and in no way saw the depth coming from the blurb. Every detail of this story felt like a future that is one of the many possibilities for us. Blake did his due diligence when researching for this book, and again within the text as Logan ponders out that big question, “Is it possible to save humanity from itself?”

From his person life, to his professional, Logan is doing his best to make up for the black mark on his name. When his world gets turned upside down from a raid gone wrong, he works through it the only way he knows how—not repeating history. By the end of the book, I was in tears from his personal growth.

While I am not the most science jargon savy person, I never once felt lost with the discussions in the book, and was surprised to see Logan’s thoughts aligned with my own from the interpersonal level of humanity. Blake does a wonderful job of explaining just the right amount for those that don’t have a background in genetic manipulation, all while keeping true to the characters voices in the story that do have that background.

Overall, the story is well laid out, perfectly paced—I read it in every spare moment I had just to figure out what was going to happen next—and addresses one of the many elephants we have in the room with us. The characters are diverse, relatable, and feel like the people in your own family.

There is no way I could rave about this book enough. You’re going to love it, if you enjoy books that pull at your emotions, and leave you feeling hopeful for humans.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for an advanced copy of this book.

Read more reviews from Sabetha!