Review – Upgrade by Blake Crouch

I received this book for free from the publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Upgrade by Blake Crouch
Narrator: Henry Levya
Published by Random House Publishing Group on July 12, 2022
Genres: Fiction / Thrillers / Technological
Length: 9 hours 47 minutes
Format: ARC, Audiobook
Source: Library, Publisher
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Amazon | Audible | B&N | Kobo | Libro.fm

The mind-blowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion—currently in development as a motion picture at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners

“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.

This was good! I like Blake Crouch’s brand of scientific thrillers. I can’t tell you if the science in this story is completely accurate or not but I can tell you that the story was incredibly exciting and I was entertained. I know that I have heard debates about whether we should be altering genes and liked that this book took the possibilities of gene altering to the next level.

I liked Logan a lot. He works for the GPA, Gene Protective Agency, which works to stop rogue scientists from doing work with genes. On a raid, he is knocked out and ends up in the hospital. He goes home and starts to notice that he is able to do things he couldn’t before. Eventually, he finds out that he has been upgraded and seems to be improving every day. That is just the start of things getting weird. This book was really exciting and kept me guessing. Once I started this book, I did not want to stop and ended up finishing it in just a couple of days.

I believe that this is the first time that I have had the chance to listen to Henry Levya’s narration and I must say that I am impressed. I found his voice very easy to listen to and did just that for hours at a time. I thought that he added a lot of excitement to the story and I liked the character voices that he used. I would not hesitate to listen to this narrator’s work again in the future.

I would recommend this book to others. I didn’t like this one quite as much as Dark Matter or Recursion but I did find it to be a very solid thriller. I do hope to read more of this author’s work in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Ballantine Books via NetGalley and borrowed a copy of the audiobook from my local library.

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