2022 #24: Upgrade (Crouch)

Upgrade by Blake Crouch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read Crouch's Dark Matter four years ago and very much admired how the author seems to negotiate that oh-so-fine line between the "sci" and the "fi" of the genre. This was my first time listening to his work and it was a very different experience than that of reading.

I appreciate the "realistic" dystopias like this one--those that remind us this is probably NOT a far off distant future, at least in some respects. Gene modification is certainly a growing aspect of our lives, and the ravages of climate change are inevitable. Crouch digs in to the moral questions connected to our survival of a species, and not in the same old clichéd ways. As with in Dark Matter, the book is threaded with a tale of decision making, and how one person's "save humanity" is another's "lose our humanity." Everyone has their own justifications, and I think Crouch really brings that forward with his protagonist, Logan Ramsay.

Where I didn't enjoy the experience of the audiobook is the lists....there were a lot. I think reading through lists of gene names (HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee symbols) would have been less irritating than hearing them read to me. I longed for a genetic upgrade to speed up time during those passages. Perhaps those who really dig details like that feel differently, but it did nothing for me except make me feel impatient.

Still, the story shares with good spy novels the sense of never knowing who you can trust -- even the protagonist. A lot of the characters operate at Anakin-as-older-padawan level (sorry for the Star Wars reference, which is a first for me). But that's good character writing--and it turns out that messing around with our genetics doesn't really change the human capacity to straddle good and evil...well, until the Epilogue. I would have preferred just the letter of the epilogue, but Crouch spares us a totally clichéd reunion (e.g. overwrought with emotion), at least.

The book spends too much time with cat and mouse/fugitive scenarios, and then seems to remember its raison d'être in fits and starts, so the rhythm of the book in that sense is my biggest issue. I also didn't really care for Henry Levya's reading. His voice is fabulously comforting as Logan--but a bit too much. Even in scenes that warranted the character having a strong emotional response, everything felt a bit too even-keeled -- playing chess was about the same experience as coming under gunfire. Levya is a great choice, in some respects, because he does really help us understand Logan as a sort of "everyman" character--but it all starts to blend a bit a couple hours in.

All in all a worthwhile experience, and it teases out some larger questions with which we should be grappling now, not "in the future."


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