This is my first Blake Crouch read after Recursion and given how much I loved that book, Upgrade had a lot to live up to.

In some ways, it re-affirmed my love for sci-fi and has made me want to prioritise reading more of the genre (and more Blake Crouch) but ultimately this fell a bit short of my expectations.

The premise is a fine one and the story as a whole obviously has a wider message that is appreciated but I often found myself zoning out reading the technobabble/medical jargon because it does get excessive. I also think the story gets a bit too silly towards the end and while the final resolution works, getting there doesn’t feel completely earned.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for providing me with a copy for review.

I am very sad to say I did not like this at ALL. I loved Dark Matter so much (despite its flaws) and enjoyed Recursion but found it rather uncreative and just not that great, but this one I considered DNF-ing so many times throughout the book, The only thing that got me through it was the fact that I've seen quite a few positive reviews, which made me think maybe by the end of the book I'd change my mind. But I did not.

Upgrade feels like the author did a lot of research for it and made sure to write all of it onto the story instead of integrating this research seamlessly into it and focusing on writing a good, loosely scientific book with all the tension and entertainment that one expects from a thriller.

The pacing was so off, and the inner voice of the main character so off-putting that I was incredibly bored most of the time. Upgrade is mostly a lot of telling you how smart and fast and incredible the main character becomes after receiving this "upgrade" while boring the reader to tears by naming every single vaguely genetics-related thing he can think of, any time, completely unprompted. The whole book has a vibe of "look at how smart I am, I know all this Stuff" while also not quite convincing that the character is very smart at ALL with his terrible decision-making skills. The author wants us to believe the main character is now super smart because he suddenly Knows Stuff while not actually walking us through his thoughts or trying to actually show us in any way how his way of thinking about things changed. All we get is "now I can totally see the world in a way I couldn't before" and "by the way I remember everything and my big brain broke the IQ test".

It was also quite amusing to me that his biggest superpower except for enhanced pattern recognition and memory, seemed to be "I can tell what people are feeling" and "I can see how society puts pressures on people and puts them in difficult situations". So.... your super power ranger upgrade.... allows you some basic empathy and critical thinking skills?

I feel like Upgrade was aiming at Michael Crichton and actually hit at Dan Brown - a bit of a silly book that takes itself too seriously and likes to drop difficult, obscure terms for the sake of sounding smart to the reader. I have nothing against an over-the-top sci-fi with only limited believable value (I enjoyed Crouch's previous books after all), but it needs at least to be entertaining.

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I suppose my main complaint about the book is that, for all the Big Brain Energy of the Ramsey family, not a single one of them thought that, for all that they're so smart, they're not actual experts in the premise they're basing their inflexible moral positions on. Is it immoral to spread a virus that will make humans "better" for the sake of humanity's future? The fact is that for all the virologists and computer scientists they hired for their Plandemic (haha), there was not ONE sociologist in sight. Not a single person who dealt with human behavior or psychology, only microscopes and genetic code. How do you base a possible genocide on your very not expert opinion on the matter? Where is the data to support your claim? This annoyed me SO much.

And perhaps the point of the book is that people with power are liable to be corrupted by it and turn into authoritarians but it felt to me like the author was not actually going on that direction with That Ending, and rather giving a non-disputable solution to the problem of humanity's future that would make him still look like the good guy after infecting humanity with an unknown virus that nobody agreed to get, with absolutely not enough control work done to establish whether that is a safe solution, or even a good one. It felt that the reader obviously had to agree with him. The galaxy brain was the basic empathy we made along the way, I guess.

I really enjoyed this book, found the first part absolutely riveting, great set up, loads of twists and great storytelling. The second part was good, but not in the same way as the first part and the third part , although still good just seemed to finish the story off. But a good story

Blake Crouch is one of my favourite authors and well up there with the greats so I was thrilled to be able to review his latest novel. What a brilliant concept, gene manipulation to better? The human race. I ploughed straight in and loved it immediately. Maybe not his best as it lost impetus half way though. However I very much enjoyed it and will recommend it.

This sci-fi novel from one of my favourite authors is frighteningly realistic. It's set several years in the future, where human gene editing is a regular but illegal occurrence, and there's a sequence of events that put the future of humanity in the protagonist's hands. (No spoilers)

Protagonist Logan is uniquely positioned as both the child of an infamous genome editing scientist, and also a cop for the government's Gene Protection Agency.

His work takes him to a strange location, where he gets struck by what is to all intents and purposes a gene editing bomb that effectively gives his entire body and mind a complete upgrade.

As time progresses, Logan gets locked up for observation. Soon after he has more to be concerned about than an illegal genetic upgrade. He may be on the run, but that 's the least of his problems.

Together with the person who broke him out of the facility, he learns of a dangerous plan to unleash a gene editing virus on humanity.

Logan lets his wife and daughter believe he has been killed so that he can pursue his mission to save humanity.

After this point there are a great many action scenes as well as dramatic betrayals. The action scenes are taut, and most of them involve bullets.

And because it's set in the future, much of the story takes place in a Venice-like New York city.

When Logan receives his upgrade, the vocabulary of the tome becomes more complex, which adds to the effect of the character becoming more intelligent as a result of his upgrade.

I found the book very thought provoking, since the protagonist has to deal with a dilemma about whether humanity should be driven by the "engines of reason" rather than of sentiment.

The story had a surprising yet satisfying ending.

I felt that a key detail was missing at the end, although this may have been implied, and I just failed to read between the lines.

All in all, this book was quite an adventure!

I had no idea what to think of this going in but i really enjoyed it. Despite all the technical talk. I dont need to know if all of that actually makes sense or is real, Im not a reader who needs things to be 'real'. Its real to those characters so thats all that matters. I can suspend my believe for the sake of the story and none of this took me out of their world to the point where i was thinking - Nah! I dont buy it.
I could read a Sequel/Prequel to this happily.
I read an arc copy of this book - thanks to Netgalley. Its a shame i didnt get to it earlier, but im glad i read it.

Upgrade was entertaining although not as thrilling as many of this author's other books. The premise was super interesting - our characters live in a world where genetic hacking has become commonplace and highly regulated. What happens when someone hacks your genes without your knowledge? What makes a human "better"? Who gets to lay claim to these technologies? Interesting questions and a fun read.

I went into this completely blind and absolutely loved the initial pages as it set up the premise and got into the heart of the story. There were so many things that surprised me, and those reveals contributed so much to the delightful experience of reading this book. After I finished, I read the blurb on the back, and it pretty much gives it all away. So my suggestion is to skip the blurb altogether and just go right into it. You'll be glad you did.

It was a great book in the first part. I wanted to see Logan going out of whatever he was in. I was always fascinated by genetics but here it was really sad about the evolution and where this took him. And who was behind all that for me was not fascinated to enjoy the book like i did with previous onces. I could immagine this happen but not by the poeple so closed to him. The price he paid was in my opinion to high. But I am sure and as I hears people love this book and it is certenly worth of reading.

Thank you pan Macmillian and netgalley for this arc so much

Blake Crouch delivers another highly entertaining book fulled by some interesting science and characters

Blake Crouch is great at writing science fiction that explores key elements of the human experience. Upgrade looks at it through a story about genetic engineering and a lot of the ideas and questions it raises stick with you for a while. Compared to Recursion and Dark Matter, some of the plotting and character development doesn't track quite as well, but it is still a very compelling and worthy read.

An intelligent interesting sci fi novel I liked the premise of being able to change people’s intelligence and physical
Abilities by hacking their genome
Although I enjoyed the first third of the book I found that once his sister became involved and the book became about stopping her it was somehow less interesting to me and the book flagged a big towards the end .I think this was primarily because I didn’t fully understand the sisters reason for doing what she was doing
There were some fast exciting chase and fight scenes which were cinematic in quality .i often feel reading novels like this that they would make better films than novels as you would then be able to cut out some of the explanation paragraphs whilst keeping the action
I did love the demise of the sister I found this scene touching as was the final chapter when he looks more deeply into his relationship with his wife and daughter.These scenes introduced us late into the book to more of his essential character which I’d found missing in earlier sections
If you like slick fast exciting sci fi this may be for you but if like me you need more character development you might like me find it missing
I read a copy on NetGalley Uk the book was published on 7th July 2022

Upgrade is full of ethical dilemmas - if you could ensure the survival of the planet what lengths would you go to to succeed?. Crouch appears to know his biology with plenty of science stuff to make the scenarios played out in Upgrade seem worryingly possible. in a world rocked by a man made genetically engineered disaster a government agency is tasked with preventing further genetic tampering. However, when Logan is exposed to an unknown gas he finds himself modifying into the 'alpha' Homosapien capable of rapid learning and skills acquisition. As his DNA is altered for the better, others exposed to the gas appear to endure more sinister repercussions. Who is behind the attack and why are some individuals thriving? A gripping thriller.

The infamous Miriam Ramsay created the biological DNA modifier system Scythe, and unwittingly became the architect of the largest accidental mass killing in human history. Her actions unleashed a cascade of genetic changes which led to worldwide famine, environmental collapse, and more.

Her son, Logan, has spent most of his adult life trying to atone for the result of his family’s mistakes, firstly in jail, and now as an Agent of the Gene Protection Agency. During a raid on an underground gene lab, Logan is exposed to an unknown virus manufactured using Scythe. With his genome evolving, Logan has no idea what he is turning into or who he can trust, but he may be the only person able to prevent his upgrades from having disastrous effects on the rest of humanity.

Upgrade is a fast-paced biotech sci-fi thriller. Crouch, who is fast becoming my surrogate Michael Crichton, has delivered yet another complex and engaging story which is shot through with enough solid science to make it worryingly plausible. After all, gene editing is advancing all the time, and all it takes is one person using it in the wrong way, whether accidentally or on purpose, to topple the first domino and start the cascade.

While I enjoyed the novel, I found that it relied too much on the information dump method to advance the story, interfering with the flow. The little shout-out to one of his colleagues was nice, though – I do enjoy it when they co-author. It’s not my favourite of Crouch’s novels, but still worth the read.

I received a free reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love to read, because it teaches me new things. This is either where facts are woven into a fictional story, by new perspectives from fictional characters that I hadn't considered before or by pure old non-fiction. Upgrade brings together all 3 of those aspects, the science is very detailed and not dumbed down at all, at times reading like a text book (which was good for me, but might put off other readers!) and I came away with a lot more knowledge of DNA then I had before. Crouch also weaves in the perspectives from various viewpoints on engineered human evolution, and that debate is a theme throughout the book.

I've read one Blake Crouch book before (Dark Matter), which was very good, so I had an idea of what to expect in terms of style and pace. I would definitely recommend Dark Matter if you like science fiction! I think there is more that Crouch could have done with this book to make it read more like a thriller, I'm not sure whether that was the intention, but it didn't read as a race against time throughout. Having said that, previous to reading Upgarde, I read a Simon Kernick book and really struggled through the formulaic thriller, so this was much better! The story also only follows Logan, and is written from his perspective (though other characters do voice their opinions), so it did feel a little linear at times, and I think a change in narrator would have helped. I would have also liked to see Logan tackle more problems in the book, it was a little light on detail in those areas, but there could have been more examples of him solving problems or profiling people around him. With his supreme intelligence I would have thought he would have used this in more day-to-day situations, rather than just solely to save the world.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Upgrade, and like I said it has definitely taught me a few things, so I've come away with a 4/5 happiness rating. Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

Agent Logan Ramsay works for Gene Protection Agency, searching for illegal dark gene labs. During a raid, his suit is compromised and Logan ends up in quarantine, as GPA reckons that Logan was exposed to a virus.

Logan receives the ‘all clear’, however, a month later, something strange is happening to his body and mind. He feels physically fitter and stronger, his mind is sharper, he even wins against his daughter in chess. He starts to think logically rather than rely on emotions like he used to in the past.

He thinks he must have received an upgrade, but from whom? He tries to withhold this information from his employer, but GPA are already in pursuit.

Soon, Logan goes on the run and abandons all his loved ones. The future of humanity is in his hands… What will he do?

You must read this book for yourselves to find out. I absolutely loved it!

I really liked Logan as a character, he was someone the reader could relate to (despite the upgrade!). He had troubled past, he lived in his mother’s shadow, who was a geneticist, a real prodigy in her field. All Logan wanted was to be just like her. Despite his childhood and early adulthood, he had a lovely relationship with his wife Beth and daughter Ava.

I found the idea of an upgrade quite compelling: who wouldn’t want to be smarter and physically fitter? On the other hand there’s the moral and ethical question of whether it is right to be upgraded in such a way, and isn’t it a bit like playing god? Also, wouldn’t it be boring if everyone was super intelligent, fit, and didn’t rely on emotions? After the upgrade, Logan became emotionally detached and cold, there were glimpses of the ‘old Logan’ but they were few and far between.

The plot of this story and the ethics are definitely this book’s strengths.

It was my first book by the author but it won’t be my last!

I recommend it 100%.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan for my copy of this book and to Stephen Haskins of Black Crow PR for the invitation to this blog tour.

Thank you to #Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

Now I want to say I went into this blindly as I had completely forgotten what it was about by the time it got approved and I can honestly say I think it's the best way to go about it. So all I am saying is this book deals with genetic modifications, it's advantages and disadvantages, as well as other current issues such as climate change, pandemics, etc.

I am honestly surprised by it because I absolutely loved it. It was so interesting that read. The first 40% of this book just flew by and then it went a bit more thoughtful. You would find Logan contemplating his Upgrade, the past and the future and it slowed down again. I found myself thrown off a bit by the change of pacing but other than that I absolutely loved it. The characters. The idea and how it was executed. How thought-provoking it was (this will have me thinking for a while). The action. Overall a really great and quick read.
Which I am happy to give 4.5 stars.

A science fiction thriller that explores gene modification in the near future. Fast paced, well written though the science facts were over my head, it is a horrifying glimpse into humanity's future. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher to the arc.

Blake Crouch returns with another fun, high-concept premise in this follow-up to his brain-twisting 2019 hit, Recursion. Where Recursion was a time travel novel, Upgrade tackles the perhaps more imminent question of what might happen should humanity develop the means to fully edit its genome. This imminence is both a strength of the book and a weakness. Crouch's envisioning of the future feels all too close - a wildfire-destroyed west, a flooded lower Manhattan, a reference to the Covid-19 pandemic - which tilts the book ever so slightly into preachiness. It's structure, action sequences and characterization also feel written specifically for translation to the big screen, and indeed Crouch sold the film rights to Amblin Entertainment before the book was even out. His main character is a well-meaning and well-fleshed out figure whose experience of being genetically upgraded offers interesting insights into the questions of what make us human. The other characters' motivations, extreme as they are, seem less validated. While it's still great fun to read, one can't help but wonder if this is a book that should have been a movie to begin with.

"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."

Having never read any of Blake Crouch's previous books I wasn't sure what to expect. The description certainly drew me in, however, and I am grateful to NetGalley for giving me a chance to read Upgrade. The premise is a simple one - in a future world, where gene engineering is rife, Logan Ramsay's DNA is 'upgraded', making him smarter, stronger, faster. So far so good ... or is it? Logan soon finds out that the plan is for everyone to be re-engineered - and Logan isn't so sure that his re-engineering is all good. It's a race against time to try and stop the upgrade being shared across the globe. This really was a book that I didn't want to put down - part dystopian/sci-fi novel and part thriller - I was sucked in at an early point and really wanted to know whether Logan succeeded in his self-set mission. An excellent read