upgrade

My Rating ~ Three and a half Stars

3half-gold-stars copy 2

RELEASE DATE: 7 July 2022

Format: Paperback

Pages: 337

Publisher: Macmillan

Blurb

“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?

Review

Thank you so much to Macmillan Australia for providing me with a copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review!

Logan works in the Gene Protection Agency, which detects criminals using DNA to create new creatures or modify the genes of others. Having already been previously jailed, when his super smart scientist mother wiped out a whole bunch of the population with a genetic modification, he now does his best at a job he doesn’t enjoy, to dampen down some of the guilt he feels due to his involvement. After a raid gone wrong, Logan starts to notice changes about himself. His memory starts to improve, he is suddenly getting smarter, more perceptive….better. But as his abilities grow and he discovers a much broader plan for humanity, he will do anything to stop it.

Upgrade was a wild, action packed ride and the concept was very cool. I can see this one being made into a pretty great movie! I really enjoyed Logan as a character and it was torturous watching what he went though as his mind changed for the better and his life for the worse. There’s a fairly heavy lean on the ‘humanity is broken and can’t be fixed’ idea, so if you’re not into that ideal, you might want to skip it. I did love that the epilogue of this book actually enhanced the story, instead of being a weird afterthought that could be left out, like most epilogues 😄

All in all, this was a fun read but probably my least favourite Blake Crouch book so far (the Wayward Pines books are still far and away my favourites). The DNA science was honesty just…so boring. I mean, I assume that no person who isn’t really into DNA science is going to understand 99% of it, so it could be complete nonsense for all I know. I found myself mindlessly skipping over those parts and the story could have easily been written without relying so heavily on that information.