Despite being a huge film fan, and films being the primary topic of the podcast, I do really enjoy reading. I don’t read half as much as I probably should, but still, when the chance comes along I’m more than happy to disappear into a book.
Like most of the world I absolutely love the Millennium trilogy, starting with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and followed superbly by The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest, all written by Stieg Larsson who sadly passed away before he could see the global phenomenon that his books would become. In Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomqvist he has created two incredibly detailed and often tragic protagonists as well as a worthy supporting cast.
There had always been rumors that Larsson had early, unfinished drafts of more stories, but his widow had made the decision that they would not be released. A new author was found and in 2015 we had The Girl In The Spiders web, written by Lagercrantz.
Right from the start it does feel different, it’s hard to explain how, but I found myself having to remind myself that this was a different author. The story really starts with computer scientist Frans Balder, a genius really, who has left his job in America to return to Sweden to look after his autistic son August. Then we find that Balder has been targeted by a criminal organization called the Spiders, it’s this chain of events that lead us to finally meeting Lisbeths twin sister Camilla.
Camilla was oddly absent from the original trilogy, we knew she existed but that was all. I always found her absence to be deliberate, as if Larsson had plans for her at some point. I don’t know if she is what Larsson imagined, but she is absolute evil. The polar opposite to Lisbeth, who can be hard, but not without reason. Camilla is beautiful, seductive, manipulative and totally without remorse as she now heads up her fathers empire, now rebranded as The Spiders.
Caught up in all of this (as always) is Mikael Blomqvist. As much as I like him in the other books, here I find him a bit wet. In the original trilogy he and Salander were different, but equals. In this book he is outshone by her almost from the start. It’s a shame, but as she is “The Girl” in the titles of this series it’s nothing that can really be complained about.
The story falls into a traditional cat and mouse format, which again isn’t a bad thing really, it keeps the pace of the story high, which probably is the best thing that could be done to follow Hornets nest, which was a great read, but was largely a courtroom drama of sorts.
The one complaint I have is that Lisbeth and Camilla don’t meet face to face, the closest we get is that they see each other from a distance. Lagercrantz has written two more books to follow this, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye and The Girl Who Lived Twice, so I’m sure we will get that showdown at some point, I’m looking forward to seeing how these characters develop with Lagercrantz, even though he has said he won’t be writing a forth book.
Over all I found this book to be very respectful, almost affectionate to the original trilogy and that bodes well for the next two books.
One thing I think I should say is the book is totally different to the film that came out in 2018. I found it funny that even though I’d seen the film of this book, I still imagined Lisbeth looking like Rooney Mara, or Noomi Rapace. Trying to picture her as looking like Claire Foy just didn’t work for me.
A worthy read and a solid first entry into a new trilogy 8.5/10
Dead Mans Chest 