embershelf 's review for:

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

4.0

adventurous emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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“Rejecting something that involves killing a billion people isn’t the same thing as sticking my head in the sand while the world burns.”

Between his Wayward Pines trilogy, Dark Matter, and Recursion, this is Blake Crouch’s weakest novel in my opinion. As for why I still gave it such a high rating, we’ll get to that shortly.

I think it’s very challenging to write a story where the characters become really powerful. Overpowered, even. How do you keep the stakes high? How do you avoid potholes? I don’t usually have a hard time suspending disbelief unless the potholes are glaringly obvious (which wasn’t my experience) but I could see that a very analytical reader who has more scientific knowledge may potentially struggle with some parts.

I did enjoy the more thrillery aspects and plot twists in the last quarter of the novel when the pace really ramped up. There were a few slower parts before that, often relating to the protagonist travelling from one place to another, which I felt could have been sped up. On average, I would say the pacing ranges between moderate and fast.

The prose is fairly bland, but I didn’t really expect outstanding prose from Crouch anyway based on his other novels I’ve read. That sounds scathing, but I really don’t mean it that way! He makes up for this with his plot, the twists and turns, and interesting scientific explanations that seem at least somewhat plausible and aren’t overbearing. I do have a little bit of background in science which helps, but you certainly don’t need to understand all of the sciency parts in order to enjoy the novel.

A few favourite quotes:

“Being smart doesn’t make people infallible. It just makes them more dangerous.”

“What do you call a heart that is simultaneously full and breaking? Maybe there’s no word for it, but for some reason, it makes me think of rain falling through sunlight.”

If there’s one thing Crouch excels at, it’s writing action and suspense. There was a part near the end where I was truly hooked and terrified. I could see the action vividly in my mind’s eye. It was like watching a movie, and I have to attribute that to Crouch’s excellent descriptions of not only the events taking place, but the internal experiences of his main character as he interprets these events. Furthermore, it’s one thing after another—just when you think things are looking up or they can’t get any worse, the character is hit with another complication or setback that seems absolutely insurmountable. I was on the edge of my seat for the final 50 pages. This book would make for a great sci-fi action thriller movie.

This novel poses some really interesting questions about what it means to be human, legacy, determinism, and the ethics of genetic engineering. I won’t reflect any further as these are best experienced by reading the novel. 

I was also pleasantly surprised by the emotions conveyed in this novel, particularly the sense of loss that kept coming back—loss of identity, relationships, and the environment as we know it. The epilogue tore me apart. Simply masterful. This is what elevated the novel from a 3.75 to a 4.0 for me. 

While this book was my least favourite of Blake Crouch’s so far, I will continue to read whatever he writes. He remains one of my favourite authors and I look forward to diving into his earlier, lesser-known works.