The Girl in the Spider’s Web (Millennium Series)

David Lagercrantz has taken Stieg Larsson's characters, the original trilogy's plot and spun a beautiful tale. This book has its own new characters who add to the story. Of particular interest to me was August, the autistic Savant who at 8 years of age is able to collaborate with our very own

Show More

favorite Lisbeth Salander. It appears that there will be sequel and I'm waiting eagerly for it/them. A must read.

Show Less

I have to give credit to David Lagercrantz - it's almost disconcerting (for Larsson's sake!), puzzling and wondrous at the same time that The Millennium series (the 3 explosive novels by Stieg Larsson,​ after writing which he so suddenly died) can be so well "revived" and continued by another

Show More

author... I found it eerie to read it - while realizing that it was not Larsson who wrote it. The same format (short chapters with intriguing ending, with another starting about something else - which makes you almost speed up your reading, so as to get to the next one and see what's going on...). It's also the same theme - investigating journalism (with Mikael Blomkvist facing more problems), and the hacker community (with Lisbeth Salander in the lead), and Salander's fight against the abuse of women and children; there is a subtheme of autism and the "savant" notion in some autistic children, which I found amazing. We also learn more about Salander's past, more skeletons come out of the closet this time around. The narrative is a bit better than the dialog. And yet, the new plot is fresh and keeps you on your toes.

Show Less

Having loved the first three books in the series, prior to Larsson's death, I was very happy with this addition by David Lagercrantz. I was listening to the audio, again, and felt just the same way I did with the first three books---Lisbeth Salander and Micael Blomqvist are just as appealing.

Show More

Fortunately, Salander's evil twin sister continues her potential part in future stories if Lagercrantz decides to continue with these characters.

Show Less

I didn't know what to expect from a Stieg Larsson book written by someone who's not Stieg Larsson, but I must say I hardly noticed the difference. True, I read the first three Millennium books in 2009, but Mikael and Lisbeth were portrayed here just like I remembered them. I didn't know how much I

Show More

missed Lisbeth Salander until I started this book, and now I can't wait for the fith book in the series.
I understand and respect Eva Gabrielsson's frustration, but as a writer myself, I think I'd like someone to respectfully finish the story I've started writing should I die before finishing it. Of course I never met Stieg Larsson, but the way I see it, The Girl in the Spider's Web is a gift to his readers.

Show Less

Very good reviews have been written about this book and I encourage they be read since they cover background and overviews which I do not intend to critique... except to say that I was amazed at how well the new Millennium Series author David Lagercrantz managed to slip into character and weave a

Show More

terrific page-turner. Two new issues that I personally appreciated were (1) that Millennium's Blomkvist's pet pastime, or stress-reliever, changed from drinking coffee and smoking, which I had been certain was Larsson's bad habit and was going to be the death of him, to reading Elizabeth George's Detective Lynley mysteries; and (2) that another enchanting character, August Balder, an eight year-old autistic savant, is being developed as perhaps a growing partner to Lisbeth Salander. Am anxiously looking forward to the continuation of this series.

Show Less

SENATOR, YOU'RE NO JACK KENNEDY

I was a big fan of Stieg's Larsson's trilogy published in the USA 2008-2009. I gobbled them up as soon as they came out. I particularly liked "Dragon Tattoo" and I enjoyed the US and Swedish film versions of that story as well. While I liked the succeeding two books,

Show More

"Fire" and "Hornet's Nest" I felt they treated Lisbeth Salander as more of a super-hero, and they both felt a bit like comic book treatments. However, I must admit that Amazon readers generally don't agree with me based on ratings and number of reviews. "Dragon Tattoo" was 4.5 stars with 6000 reviews; the other two Larsson books each had 8500 reviews and 4.5 stars. On the one hand while I was sad to hear of Larsson's demise realizing there would be no more "The Girl...." books, I was satisfied that the stories had probably run their course; I was ready to move on to new things. When it was announced a few years back that the series would continue under the authorship of David Lagercrantz I wasn't too excited - I was not familiar with any successful extensions of a deceased author's work, yet aware of a couple disasters.

Recently, I read the Washington Post's Maureen Corrigan review of "The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye", book #5 if you're counting. In it she comments that #4, "The Girl in the Spider's Web" (SW) , had received terrific reviews and recalled Larsson's "numbed noir atmosphere" yet eliminated some of his stylist faults; I decided to give Lagercrantz a shot and try SW.

I found it to be very different, not in a good way in many cases, from the original. For one thing, it's main focus was not on Millenium magazine, star reporter Blomqvist and the rest of the team. Rather it had an awful lot to do with hacking, computer security, software, and the inner workings of NSA, Sweden's Sapo, and the Stockholm police. Salander's presence in the first half on the book is mostly in the background, i.e., by reference; I kept waiting for her to make a grand entrance. Finally, she appears, and it's not so grand. She encounters a bad guy and smites him.....in a game of chess. He admits to some evil doings, confesses all, and Salander lets him go! A kinder, gentler, Salander? Well, yes and no. She does come to the rescue of a young boy with an all too common affliction, befriends him and saves him again, and again.

I thought the writing style was inferior. Page 310: "Kajsa could tell that he felt terrible about shooting those children (reviewer's note, two little girls, both in the face). He was a murderer, a man whose specialty had been torture...but he still had his moral boundaries..." I didn't feel the same tension that I recall in the Larsson books, but then again it's been almost 8 years. Occasionally, some of the dialogue seemed off. Occasionally, there would be a response that didn't seem just right in English. I'm not sure if that's on the translator or the author, but it was a bit annoying. The plot wasn't that interesting to me. The original books were longer by about 250 - 350 pages but they seemed to fly by faster than SW. The comic book aura is still there. A leading character is shot, entry and exit wound; takes some anti-biotics but no doctor, no stitches - really!? And several key characters use handles to disguise their web identity, e.g. The Wasp - if you're between 12 and 28 you probably know who that was, or is, I'm not sure.

In conclusion, let's first take a look at the Amazon numbers. Four stars for SW, down 1/2 star, but 9600 reviews. I suspect that the reader count may have been boosted in part by the advent of e-readers in the ensuing years. Will I read "Eye for an Eye"? Probably not, but I may feel differently a year from now.

Show Less

Regardless of the fact that David Lagercrantz has taken over Stieg Larsson's Millennium series following Larsson's death and that there seems to be some controversy surrounding that fact, there really was no question of whether I'd read this or not. The fact is, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael

Show More

Blomkvist are two characters that you just want to read more about. And so I dug into this eagerly.

The storyline was decent enough. Like its predecessors, it involved more computer hacking, more bad guys (and girls), more murder, and quite a few new characters and names that are hard to keep track of and hard to pronounce. As a "continuation" of the original Millennium trilogy, I though that this was a pretty good overall story and it felt similar to what Larsson might write, speaking strictly regarding the plot. However, the writing style was very different. I thought initially that perhaps it might be due to the translation, but I don't think that's the case. Admittedly, it's got to be difficult to copy another writer's style, but if done well, it shouldn't be overly obvious that another individual is doing the writing. But in this case, it just didn't feel right. Larsson had a way of writing that allowed the reader to draw their own conclusions about the characters' actions and feelings, and it was effective. Lagercrantz, on the other hand, gives too much information and doesn't leave much to the reader's imagination. It left me unsettled.

So ultimately I was disappointed. But if I have to be honest, I'll probably read any future installments by Lagercrantz, because despite the difference in writing style, Blomkvist and Salander are just two characters that I'm not ready to give up on yet.

Show Less

I only had mediocre feelings about this book going into it and I must say I was pleasantly surprised! When I heard that Stieg Larsson's estate had found someone to continue on his trilogy after the author's untimely death I had mixed feelings, how could someone even come close to capturing Lisbeth

Show More

and Blomkvist?! Thankfully David Lagercrantz did a bang up job sticking to the mannerisms, wording, and character development of the original series and did a good job recreating Stieg Larsson's vision. A must read for fans of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Swedish thrillers. A faithful continuation.

Show Less

This was an incredible book, don't get me wrong. But it lacked the depth and complexity of Larsson's book and felt awfully abrupt. I still enjoyed it immensely. Some pieces of Salander's personality seemed fabricated (the convoluted meaning behind the "Wasp" handle, for instance) and Mikael

Show More

Blomkvist seemed tossed in as an aside - I hope Lagercrantz continues the series so I can get my Salander fix, but I also hope he improves his craft.

Show Less

Everyone in the world who reads must know the story about how Stieg Larsson wrote three books and then abruptly died without a will. His longtime companion was left without any portion of his by then considerable estate and his father and brother inherited everything. I was appalled that they would

Show More

not do the right thing and share the estate with the woman who was in all but paper a spouse to Larsson. Thus, I had mixed feelings about reading this book which was commissioned by the brother and father since they will gain even more from Larsson's genius. Nevertheless once it was in my hands I could not help but read it.

I have to say that, while not quite up to Larsson's three books, this is a gripping thriller. Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are together again fighting the forces of evil which this time are represented by Lisbeth's twin sister, Camilla, and remnants of their father's gang. Lisbeth has been hunting for Camilla for some time. Finally, after breaking into the NSA data intranet she finds indications of her plans. Blomkvist, on the other hand, has been having a difficult time finding anything interesting to write for his magazine Millennium. Then he is summoned in the middle of the night to the home of a genius computer scientist who is sitting on some explosive knowledge. Blomkvist gets to the man's house minutes after he has been killed and Mikael actually saw the killer. Inside the house, the man's autistic son, August, is alive having witnessed the murder. August does not speak so his value as a witness seems limited. As it happens August is a savant and can draw scenes with photographic accuracy. Once the killer realizes this he has to try to kill August as well. Salander and Blomkvist reunite to prevent this.

There is obviously going to be a sequel to this book. And I will be reading it I'm sure.

Show Less

This is the first book by this author, who is continuing the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" trilogy written by the late Steig Larsson. As with the other Millennium stories, this one is full of minor characters, evil villains, and cyberhacking. After the NSA is hacked by a mysterious and genius

Show More

hacker, the NSA and the Swedish Police are convinced that the hacker and other criminals are involved are from Sweden. At the same time, a famous computer programmer Franz Bader, who is responsible for cutting edge Artificial Intelligence software, is murdered in his home. His severely autistic 8 year old son, August, witnesses the crime but is unable to speak. After it is revealed that August has savant abilities in drawing and his art can be used to identify the murderer, a band of Russian criminals become involved to find August and murder him in cold blood. As with the other stories, Michael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander become entwined through their connections to the murder. Lisbeth's lost sister, Camilla, is also involved in this story and the reader learns more about Lisbeth and Camila's abusive childhood at the hands of Zalachenko.

This is a very complex story and after the first few chapters, I completely forgot this wasn't a Steig Larsson novel. The plot was engrossing and the suspense was tight. I really enjoyed how August's savant gifts paralleled Salander's own. I also loved how this novel sets up a continuation of the series. I hope that August might return in future novels and I look forward to watching the continued relationship between Blomkvist and Salander, as well as the returning characters we have grown to love over the course of the series. In all, much better than I expected. Another thrill ride with some of my favorite characters! My only criticism was that the story was difficult to follow with too many characters with similar names and shallow personalities. However, this too was similar to Larsson's style so it should not be too surprising to anyone who has read the first three books.

Show Less

Although it lacks the unique style of Larsson the book itself isn't bad at all. It's good to meet with all of the characters again and the story is ok as well.

Mixed feelings about this book. On one hand it was terriffic to see Lisbeth back, kicking ass as usual, although there isn't enough of her, before the conclusion. On the other, the story just didn't grab me. The first 50 pages and the last 100 were quite good, between was a huge ponderous mass of

Show More

exposition, with characters seemingly lost and wandering aimlessly. Clumsy is the best way to describe it. To sum up, its not Larsen, not even close, but seeing Lisbeth back almost makes up for that. Hope the inevitable follow-up has more of her and less of the deadweight that nearly sank this one.

Show Less

Lizbeth, the Swedish computer whiz with tattoos and piercings, returns. She is the focus of an international conspiracy involving NSA surveillance, an autistic savant who witnessed a murder, international cyber-criminals and a mole within the government security forces. Reporter Mikael Blomkvist is

Show More

ready to scoop the big newspapers, while Lizbeth Salander does the heavy lifting as she defeats the criminals, breaks into NSA computers and exacts a little revenge for past wrongs. Fans of the Dragon Tattoo will love this book.

I enjoyed reading this continuation of the Millennium series, and I think the plot will make a great movie. I hope they film in Sweden, with English subtitles. However, this is not a well written book; nor is it well translated. It reads like a project done in a hurry; there is much repetition and endless explanations of cyber security terms and algorithms.

Lagercrantz writes in a similar style to the deceased Stieg Larsson, originator of the series, and deserves credit for continuation of the series. However, excessive narrative and exposition reduce the impact of the story (a fault other reviewers have noted about Larsson’s original Millennium novels).

Translator Goulding is prone to use stock phrases, many of which are outdated. On the whole, the novel is easy to read and the plot moves along quickly (slowed only by the overly long exposition). My advice, skip the book; wait for the movie.

Carto

Show Less

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB by David Lagercrantz continues the unforgettable series by Stieg Larsson.
This was an excellent thriller filled with well-constructed characters and story lines. The book was very suspenseful and well-researched.
I was not disappointed in the least. In fact, I eagerly

Show More

await a new title starring Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist.

Show Less

David Lagercrantz's The Girl in the Spider's Web reads more like an attempt to write a Millennium Trilogy fan-fiction than a continuation of Steig Larsson's work. Fans of Larsson's trilogy will find all their favorite characters, but something of the tone and spirit of Larsson's writing is lacking

Show More

in this continuation. It may be the (comparatively) happy ending or the lack of the mood that pervaded Larsson's books, but something is off.
Lagercrantz, perhaps to link his book to Larsson, attempts to delve further into hacker Lisbeth Salander's past. While the second and third volumes of the Millennium Trilogy explored her troubled past and her father, Lagercrantz sets Salander against another family member: her estranged sister. Larsson never wrote much about the sister, but always hinted that she lived a normal life; Lagercrantz casts her as a Machiavellian criminal obsessed with destroying Lisbeth. Once again, Millennium magazine faces trouble and, similar to The Girl Who Played with Fire, another well-liked (though non-main cast) staff member dies during the investigation. Lagercrantz writes well-paced suspenseful sequences, but the basic plot feels too much like a rehash of previous events and he never reaches the compelling fervor of Larsson.
Perhaps it's unfair to compare the two, but as a continuation of an earlier body of work, readers will find it nearly impossible not to draw comparisons. Those looking for a well-structured crime novel will be pleased, but fans of the original Millennium Trilogy will likely be disappointed. It's a pity Larsson's father and brother could not make a deal with his partner to publish the manuscript Larsson left behind for a fourth book.

Show Less

I was very disappointed in this book. Stieg Larsson developed characters and drew the reader in from the very start. I was so annoyed with the techno-babble that I lost interest. Darn!

Pretty legitimate heir to Larrson's story. Obvious that there is another book in the making.

I so enjoy the characters and the complexity of these books but this falls far short of the original authors work The characters were not as fine drawn or as interesting. Brave man to continue such a popular series but it just fell short. I would however, read further books because I love the two

Show More

main characters.

Show Less

Something about the characters just never felt totally ... right. And [spoiler alert] the lack of direct interaction between Blomkvist and Salander was a poor choice by the author. Finally, the intricacies of the relationships of new characters and organizations which form a large part of the first

Show More

part of the book was often a bit difficult to follow. But I'll be back if there is another book in the series.

Show Less

I found this sequel to The Millennium Trilogy fairly disappointing. It might be that it will take the author time to feel wholly comfortable with following up after a popular and deceased writer, but I'm not sure all these problems are a result. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo began rather slowly,

Show More

and it took me several tries and lots of encouragement from other readers to make the effort to continue past the first few chapters, but once there, I was hooked and quickly consumed the series. So although this one began slowly, too, I gave it a shot and read about half way before calling it a day. The characters never came alive for me, even those from the previous books, and that could have been overlooked except that by about the 40% point a whole group of stock thriller complications began to weigh down the plot: the good cop and the bad supervisor, who won't listen to reason and has his own reasons for thwarting the investigation; the disabled kid, probably able to ID the bad guy but in the hands of an incompetent doctor for whom maintaining his reputation is more important than the clues the child is giving; the kid's needy mother who can't find her way to throwing out the violent boyfriend. All-in-all, by this point not worth the time I could be spending reading something I do care about.

Show Less

Note: No spoilers are contained in this review.

After the 2004 death of the author Stieg Larsson, fans of "The Millennium Series" were hoping someone new would come along to continue the franchise past the original three books. (Originally, there were to be ten books in this series.) A

Show More

widely-publicized dispute ensued between Larsson’s family and his girlfriend, who had custody of his laptop allegedly containing outlines of additional books. David Lagercrantz did not have access to any of this material, but took it upon himself to soldier on without it. I think he did an excellent job.

We continue with the same characters as in previous books including Mikael Blomkvist, the crusading journalist obsessed with social justice; Erika Berger, his (married) co-worker and occasional lover; and Lisbeth Salander, “the girl with the dragon tattoo”.

Lisbeth, the undoubted star of the series, is in her late twenties, small, slight, and goth-looking, and comes from a horrific past in which she was systematically abused and used as a scapegoat. She has grown up to be justifiably distrustful, brilliant, resourceful, way tougher than she looks, and admittedly not the sort of person you would want to cross. As Blomkvist mused about Lisbeth: “Salander was not one to forget an injustice. She retaliated and she righted wrongs.” This doesn’t work out well for some, since she has a special hatred for men prone to violence against women and children.

Like the previous books, the beginning of this one is very complex; the author takes on the very timely topic of computer hacking, specifically relating to the stealing of corporate secrets and confidential business information. Because so much modern-day commerce is global in scope, and because the internet serves to increase international connectivity, more than one nation is involved in this case. Moreover, the national intelligence services of both the U.S. and Sweden are also involved because there are no more discreet lines (indeed, if there ever have been), between industrial and political espionage, especially since governments now contract out so much military research and development.

Even with all the background we have to absorb in the beginning, the suspense and excitement begin right away. The internal computers of NSA have been hacked; a top specialist at a firm working on artificial intelligence has suddenly quit his job in the U.S. and left for Sweden; and the Russian mobsters associated with Lisbeth’s late father are still plying their trade, i.e., running a criminal network that sells drugs and arms, and profits from the exploitation of women. All of these elements turn out to be related, and all are right up the metaphorical alleys of both Lisbeth and Blomkvist.

Tension escalates as the connections unfold. And as both Mikael and Lisbeth get more deeply involved, there are plenty of heart-racing escapes and non-escapes.

Discussion: Lagercrantz, who previously wrote a book on the computer genius Alan Turing, knows his way around computers, but does not make the subject more complex than it needs to be, or more complicated than will be comfortable for readers.

He brings in some new characters, including a wonderful child named August who has a central part to play, as well as giving characters from previous books - like Inspector Jan Bublanski, more prominent roles. But I thought the author overly relied on use of the third person. I did not feel like I got to know the characters as well as in the previous books, or feel as invested in them, since they were kept at more of a distance. In addition, the author’s decision to have a female gay character continually refer to another female professional in her field as “honey” or “sweetheart” didn’t sit well with me.

Jim, who also read this book as well as the previous books in the series, thought that in this book, Lisbeth was too cartoonish in a comic book superhero kind of way. I disagreed; I felt the author dealt with this very issue by taking pains to have Lisbeth’s mentor explain to Blomkvist how engrossed Lisbeth had been as a child with Marvel comics and with the universe of superheroes who fought supervillains. In particular Lisbeth was inspired by the heroine Janet van Dyne, or “Wasp,” and she made it a goal to be as much like her as possible.

Jim also thought the tension level was less than the previous books, and he believes that the amazing success of the hackers was far-fetched (perhaps because he doesn't even know where the power button is on his computer). Again, I disagreed on both counts. He enjoyed it a lot though, and like me, is looking forward to reading further books in the series.

Evaluation: This is an intelligent, heart-racing series of books, with the latest installment by a new author by no means a disappointment.

Show Less

Apart from his gripping writing, the main reason for the success of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy was surely the presence of his creation Lisbeth Salander - so why allow her to spend so long off stage in this addition to the canon? Lagercrantz can't write like Larsson (and/or he is ill served

Show More

by his translator), but he could at least give us some Lisbeth. Without her, and without Larsson, there's really not much left.

Show Less

Lisbeth Salander saves the day eventually by her hacking prowess. Blomkvist writes another big expose. Not quite as good as Steig Larsson but I needed to finish asap.