Soon to be a major motion picture starring Claire Foy. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist return in this ripped-from-the-headlines, high-octane follow-up to Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. One of the Best Books of the Year NPR * USA Today * O, The Oprah Magazine * Esquire A genius hacker who has always been an outsider. A journalist with a penchant for danger. She is … has always been an outsider. A journalist with a penchant for danger. She is Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo. He is Mikael Blomkvist, crusading editor of Millennium. One night, Blomkvist receives a call from a source who claims to have been given information vital to the United States by a young female hacker. Blomkvist, always on the lookout for a story, reaches out to Salander for help. She, as usual, has plans of her own. Together they are drawn into a ruthless underworld of spies, cybercriminals, and government operatives—some willing to kill to protect their secrets.
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This fourth book in the Millennium Series by Stieg Larsson, written by David Lagercrantz was a perfect continuation of Lisbeth Salander’s and Mikael Blomkvist’s story. It even left a little sliver of hope at the end for a fifth book. If you loved the trilogy, you must add this book to your reading list.
I was a bit concerned about reading the follow up to the Girl With The Dragon tattoo series called
The Girl In The Spider’s Web due to the death of the original author. My concerns turned out to be misplaced. David Lagercrantz has done a terrific job in keeping Lizabeth and the other main characters alive. I recommend this book.
To be honest, I went into this with nothing but contempt, a full on attitude that someone is ripping off Stieg Larrson and my favorite girl, Salander!
Admittedly, it won me over. I loved the expanded nature of Lisbeth’s hacker genius and the added savant storyline just further enhanced her maturing nature. To me, nothing these days is quite as a good as a hacker thriller.
[See-Mr. Robot]
[See-The East]
Although the story itself won me over, I was none-to-impressed with his most obvious flaw. Overwriting is a mortal sin in my opinion. As a matter of fact, the only details that saved Lagercrantz from a two-star rating are Salander and Blomkvist. I also took into consideration that this could have been a sin of the translation, so I stuck with four stars to insure those who read this know it’s worthiness.
An additional bonus is the appearance of Salander’s sister. Lagercrantz did a good job of fleshing out her sociopathy, and I was quite impressed with her character development. Demonizing her in cahoots with the NSA was genius!
3 stars to David Lagercrantz’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web, the fourth book in the “Millenium” thriller series, written by a new author given the original, Steig Larsson, passed away several years ago. While the book carries on with great characters and a similar style, it wasn’t as satisfying as the originals. But who can resist Blomkvist and Lisbeth — you can’t NOT read it!
Story
As readers come to know of this series of books, the plots are incredibly complex, intense and twisty. From a basic point of view, several hackers have started infiltrating the NSA after learning about a conspiracy between different groups to buy and sell secrets about each other’s companies. The government is involved, trying to keep it running and trying to stop it, as well as several public companies involved in building new technology that ultimately will be the destruction of mankind should machines be able to build machines and think as sentient beings
Pushing that all to the side, the plot is about a professor who takes back his autistic son from his ex-wife and her new husband (who is abusing the young boy). When some members of the conspiracy group ultimately realize that the professor is the technologist who has the AI programs they are all after, and he’s potentially going to rat out the truth of what’s been happening to Blomkvist, someone orders a hit and the professor is killed minutes before telling his story. His young son witnesses the execution and the hunt begins. Lisbeth is involved in the hacking group and works through a secret computer program to help Blomkvist save the boy and ends up realizing she’s very close to the person at the head of the conspiracy. As they sort through the puzzle, family ties come back to haunt each of them and the struggle to keep the balance of the war just slightly in their own favor pushes forward.
Strengths
1. Lisbeth and Blomkvist are as good as ever. They jump off the pages and yearn to be loved and hated at the same time. They annoy you, but you know they are good people.
2. It’s definitely a page-turner that captures your attention about 20% in when you realize how many different players are in the game to capture the technology and to double-cross one another. It stays strong and keeps you guessing throughout the whole story. And then the head of the conspiracy is revealed about 50% through, you have a whole new level of connections that keep your mind working over-time.
Suggestions
The summary of the story is strong, but the details get too technical and too convoluted. I work in technology, so it wasn’t that I didn’t understand what they were talking about… it was that so much of it was theory and advanced mathematical formulas, it got tedious to pay attention to that level of detail. There’s only so much I can swallow when it comes to prime numbers and the Fibonacci sequence and how many multipliers are needed to deviate from the quantum… what??????? stick to the drama and leave the minutia out when you’re trying to keep the sanctity of an author whose first successful novel was a genealogical mystery!
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed the book. I wanted to keep reading it. I’d like to see another one by this author. But… in order to move it up from a 3 to 4, it needs more substance. Hacking is a great topic. NSA double-crossing it a cool idea. The family ties (no spoilers here) was an amazing story line. But something felt like it was missing in how it truly all came together. I’m hoping it was left open so it can be explored in the next book — not all to different from the original three in the series — but it needs to be more tightly weaved.
That said, kudos to Lagercrantz for successfully taking on the series and trying to continue the original creation. He’s done well enough for me to continue reading but still to keep my critical eye.
As a follow up to Stieg Larsson’s original three books of the Millennium series, this wasn’t too shabby. It mostly captures Larsson’s writing style and the story did have plenty of techie twists and turns, but overall it felt like a clumsy effort with too many characters, a cliche bad guy, and not enough of interaction between Salander and Blumqvist.
So. Very. Disappointing. It’s like the real story happened in a different book, and someone was summarizing it for us here, careful only to keep the details about the story, NOT about the characters.
I listened to the audio book in my car, and honestly did not even enjoy it as effortless background noise during my commute. There was nothing to engage with. It was all so distant and flat.
Don’t worry about spoilers here because NOTHING HAPPENED. Oh wait, a guy we totally didn’t care about got killed. Lizbeth was almost present in this book, but mostly not.
The majority of the “plot”, if you can even call it that, happened in rushed stories people told each other in side conversations. Seriously, this is how most of the “meat” of the book was revealed. All these major revelations came in retellings over drinks or in private, late-night conversations as hushed secrets and afterthoughts, rather than being revealed as they unfolded. It was all so disjointed and odd.
David Lagercrantz has a story to tell, but first, he feels compelled to make sure you understand how smart he is. The story of Lisbeth Salander is dramatic, powerful, and timely, but the author takes so long to even bring her into the story is standard of this series. The book is based more on computers, prime number factorizations, and the intricacies of journalism than on the charactersn who play out the harrowing escapes and death defying action scenes.
If you loved the suspense of Lisbeth Sander’s, you’ll love her continuing story.
Great follow-up to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy
Very disappointing continuation of the great trilogy Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Easy to tell it is not the same author. It didn’t hold my attention at all and I only read less than half of it. The plot just didn’t go anywhere.
A little less jerky than Steig Larsson, but still a great continuation of the Mikael and Lisbeth series. I very much enjoyed it, and found the characters to be close to real.
Didn’t keep my interest and Salander wasn’t really Salander. Disappointing.
I couldn’t finish this.
continues the story of Lisbeth. focuses more or Mikael, but still good
Fans of the original trilogy will not be disappointed!
As a disclaimer, I read the original trilogy (and of course loved it), and I listened to the audiobook for this one, so this really may not be a completely fair comparison. With that said, I really really thought this book lived up to the style, the humor, the incredible plot(s)/twists that the trilogy set up. I was skeptical because I loved the original so much, but I was not disappointed at all. One could argue that it’s difficult to tell just from the reading the book that the author is not the original. If you liked the first ones, you will not be disappointed in this one. I just downloaded the 5th one, and can’t wait to get started.
I mourn Stieg Larrson’s death not only because we lost a human being and wonderful writer, but also because the rest of us lost more stories about his protagonist, the girl with the dragon tattoo. Don’t be afraid to read this posthumous book written from his notes by David Lagercrantz. It continues the adventure and gives us one last delicious taste of this series.
Not as good as the 3 Steig Larson wrote but sill engaging.
I loved the original Millennium series, and was so excited to read the new books (even though they were written by someone else). Well, I bought my copy, I started reading and waited for that familiar, amazing, twisted and thrilling world to fall over me like my favorite set of sheets. And I waited… and waited…
There must have been a dozen point of view characters (where there should only have been the two–Bloomkvist and Salander), and not one of the story lines got anywhere. And though Mikael was a main character, Lisbeth was merely a rumor.
I admit I didn’t get far. There just didn’t seem a point. I read there is a movie churning up through the studio system for this book, and that the marvelous Claire Foy from The Crown is slated to play Lisbeth. I hope this goes nowhere, as the plot and characters of the book did. Let them finish filming the original trilogy, with the original cast.
My recommendation: Don’t bother.
Kept you wanting to read more to see what was going to happen!
Not up to Steig’s calibre, but fun anyways. Continues Salander’s. story arc.
First of All LOVED IT!! I’ve enjoyed this series since I saw the trailer for the first movie “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” several years ago. I’d never heard of the series and the trailer made me want to get to know it before the movie’s release. While “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” is written by a different author, it features characters from the original author’s work. I thought that the story-line held a similar flavor and it was a gripping read from start to finish. Be warned however, if your eyes start to cross when you read lots of techno-jargon and equations, you should be aware that there’s quite a lot of that in this story. Not sure so much was needed, but it did nothing to take away from the potency of the plot. I recently learned that this story is getting a film of its own. Sadly, the film’s original director won’t be returning. Neither will Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. This is why I love books- favorite characters never get recast!