Elle's Reviews > Upgrade

Now a Goodreads Choice Nominee in Science Fiction!!

“They know you’re changing.”

It all happened so quickly. Following a tip from the GPA, the Gene Protection Agency, they went into the building equipped body armor, hazmat suits and a full SWAT team. He was a scientist, not a soldier. He was going to call his wife in the morning; he was supposed to go home. But a flash, an explosion—and then Logan Ramsay was changed forever. And with him, so was the rest of the world.

The planet has evolved so quickly. What once felt like slow march towards the inevitable has accelerated into a sprint. Logan joined the GPA as a way to make amends for his mother’s role in the gene editing scheme that snowballed into an ecological disaster. The old Logan would have never considered taking part in something like that, and he wouldn’t have had the capacity to. But after the botched raid, Logan is different now, and there’s no telling what he’s willing and capable of doing.

Upgrade is exactly the sort of book that I’ve come to expect from Blake Crouch. A dynamic, fast-paced thriller nestled comfortably between grounded sci-fi and speculative fiction. There’s the ‘regular guy’ protagonist that gets thrust into the center of rapidly unfolding, almost supernaturally daunting events that have to power to shape the world as we know it. And through that vehicle Crouch offers a commentary on what he believes is one of the most pressing issues of our time. In this case, that’s climate change, but a little more broadly it’s human indifference to the effects of climate change and other impending disasters.

For the most part, it’s spectacularly done. Crouch has a way of making the implications of a far-off technological advancement feel like it’s just around the corner. You just can’t help but rip through the pages, desperate to reach the end. Upgrade is the kind of book tailor-made for a big budget movie adaptation, staring whatever 30-40 year-old white leading man is currently in demand.

This was an easy 5 star book for me. Sure, it’s a very American worldview. It’s a white guy on a Save The World™ mission, humanity’s last hope and all that. There’s nothing wrong with being a popcorn thriller with a strong message, despite what some lit snobs might believe. So why, then, does this review have four stars? Well, I literally cannot tell you. Not without massive spoilers. So please, PLEASE do not expand this spoiler text below unless you have read it already. Or are a masochist—but at that point you can’t yell at me for ruining it!!

(view spoiler)[I was all in on this, even in the epilogue, up until that final letter that Logan wrote to his wife and daughter. What a fumble on the 1 yard line (is that right?? idk I don’t do sport metaphors).

Explain to me how you can write an entire novel about the dangers of messing with humanity. About how one tiny change can have devastating, unforeseeable consequences—but you decide to solve the question of humans by once again having an entitled, know-it-all character play god on people against their will. Crouch has completely undermined his entire thesis in just a couple of pages of half-assed grandstanding. The fact that Logan could witness and face the consequences of his mother’s actions as well as literally murdering his sister to prevent her from acting, and then take it upon himself to do the same goddamned thing is a total collapse of his character arc. There’s no coming back from that; he’s now irredeemable.

I don’t even totally disagree with his point that it’s a lack of compassion that has (and will) lead human societies towards our own downfall, but I do vehemently challenge the notion that we all bear the same level of responsibility. It’s not all humans who need to be “upgraded”; it’s the powerful decision makers. There’s ample evidence that when people have been at their lowest and most vulnerable, that the communities who step up and help are the ones who have the least. And those that don’t help aren’t doing so out of apathy, but because they are simply struggling to survive themselves.

So the idea that humanity as a whole needs to be ‘fixed’, by possibly the worst candidate for White Savior since Hollywood decided to sing Imagine for us, is just incorrect. If Crouch was dead-set on this “compassion upgrade”, which I think is in moral opposition to the rest of his novel but whatever it’s his book, he could have aimed it to target a small number of influential people in high-income countries. But making it a contagion, spreading it to people without their knowledge, altering their chemical makeup without their consent, all based off of a technology that only a couple of years before had a 13% mortality rate—are we supposed to clap??

I swear if some mad scientist dude-bro reads this and decides to use it as a blueprint in the future, Blake better be long gone because I will be KNOCKING on his door! (hide spoiler)]

Even with that complaint, though, Upgrade is monstrously entertaining. My reading speed essentially doubled whenever I picked it up, so for that reason I still feel compelled to recommend it. But it’s not going to top the list for me this year, and I can’t help but express disappointment at Crouch’s final word on the subject. I do hope other people read it when they get the opportunity to as I’m very eager to discuss it more.