Reviews with content warning for Pandemic/Epidemic - Upgrade

If you have ADHD, you might have thought "man, what if I could just focus all this mental energy into something awesome?" This book definitely taps into that daydream.

I gotta say, the whole concept had me hooked from the start. The first half of the book was seriously captivating. The whole concept of human enhancement is fascinating, and Crouch does a great job of building suspense as Logan figures out what's happening to him. It's like a high-octane thriller with a healthy dose of "what if?" that really resonated with me.

However, here's the thing. Maybe it's because the mystery gets solved a little too early, but the middle of the book fizzled for me. It felt like the real meat of the story was over halfway through, and I struggled to keep the momentum going.

Also, can we talk about the whole build-up about the mother maybe being out there, then BAM! She killed herself. Seriously? That was such a gut punch. It felt like a huge letdown, especially because the mother seemed like a fascinating character. We barely got to scratch the surface of her story, and all the questions surrounding her just went unanswered.

Honestly, it felt like a missed opportunity. There was so much potential there to explore her perspective, her role in the whole situation. It's a shame they just shut the door on that entirely.

Overall, if you're looking for a mind-bending sci-fi adventure that'll tickle your ADHD curiosity, this is a good pick. Just be prepared for the possibility of needing a double-shot espresso to power through the second half.

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bluejayreads's review

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3.0

This book was recommended to me, and I generally attempt to read books recommended to me. This wasn’t my first foray into this author’s work, either. I’d read his book Recursion a while back and found it a sci-fi kind of weird that isn’t necessarily my jam, but that was well-written and had some interesting ideas. So I figured this probably wouldn’t be bad.

And I was correct. Upgrade wasn’t bad. The protagonist may not have had very many interesting characteristics beyond being the protagonist, but the concept was interesting and Blake Crouch is a competent writer. The action moved along, the story was largely well-paced, and it kept me engaged the whole way through. Nothing spectacular, sure, but perfectly readable.

However. As you might have guessed by the tone here, I do have some criticisms. Again, Blake’s particular brand of sci-fi weird isn’t quite up my alley, so some of this could definitely be me. But some of it is I just take issue with some of the fundamental concepts of the book itself.

Upgrade is ambitious in scope and interesting in concept. In a world where genetic modification is very possible (but also very illegal), an anti-gene-modification enforcement agent finds his genes being modified against his will, making him almost superhuman. Now he has to tackle questions like “why did this happen?” and “would the world be better if it happened to everybody?” But as interesting and potentially thematic as this idea could be, the execution is a little wacky. Some parts are frighteningly realistic, others are laughably not, and the discordant combination made the whole thing feel a bit silly. It would have made a perfectly serviceable mindless action movie, but the attempt at thematic depth just emphasized how ridiculous some parts of it were.

I spent a lot of time trying to put my finger on my actual problem with this book. I had notes about how Logan Ramsey has big “r/iamverysmart” vibes, and whether or not killing the same character twice was too much, and how cruel Logan’s mother was and how I couldn’t believe that neither of her children realized how much they were like her. But then I was reminded of the word “eugenics” and realized my issue. Without giving away too many spoilers, the arguable antagonist of the first half of the book thinks climate change would be solved if people were only better in a specific way and wants to accomplish that with mass gene modification. It really feels like what a eugenics movement would look like in a world where you didn’t necessarily have to breed better traits into people because you could just modify people’s genes instead. But our protagonist seemed pretty against that whole idea, so I wasn’t too bothered. Up until the end, when (minor spoiler alert) he decided his problem wasn’t so much the eugenics-style idea, just which traits should be changed. It left a really bad taste in my mouth.

It’s very possible that at least some of my complaints are because while I find these kinds of stories fine, they’re not the type of thing I generally really love. And on the whole, Upgrade was fine. I didn’t love it, I think its themes were handled poorly, and I really didn’t love some of the vibes it gives off. But it was readable. I found it interesting enough to finish. If it were made into an action movie, I think it would work pretty well. I just don’t particularly recommend it as it is.

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