The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: A Lisbeth Salander Novel

Restarting the series was a really good idea. But to make his book work he changed parts of her history. Minor parts,it's true,but to an avid fan like myself, how you dot every i and cross every t is just as important as her personality. What the book doesnt tell is how or when she came back to the US and why she was imprisoned after the court at the end of The Girl Who Stepped On The Hornets' Nest freed her and she left,disguised in one of her wigs and dressed like a normal person (My god, Lisbeth Salander? Dressed like a normal person?Don't worry,it was only a disguise she wore to leave the US) to live in Europe

To give this the five stars it deserves would be to diminish The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo, and I don't want to do that. But this excellent, and compelling sequal, paying homage to many of the same characters, is almost as good, and much more relatable to current and recent social ills. It is worth reading on its own for the story and the messages it sends. Well Done!

This new installment in the Salander/Blomkvist series takes us back into the horrors of Salander's childhood. In this case, her relationship with her evil twin sister is fleshed out in the context of an abusive government study of separated twins - a made-up history that puts actual, historical studies of twins in a gruesome fictional light. This history dovetails with the earlier history of Salander's abusive past established in the first three books, but adds a new twist. Two central characters - fellow victims who find freedom only when Salander takes out their common enemies - provide an interesting and emotionally driven sub-plot, and the book also touches on the issue of the abuse of women in religious reactionary groups. As usual, Salander is drawn into the fight to help others who are abused by powerful authorities, in part due to her loyalty to those few people who had tried to help her in the past. And as always, Salander's distrust of virtually everyone forces her to work alone against violent and authoritative enemies, putting her life at risk until her begrudging alliance with Blomkvist exposes a horrifying conspiracy and brings the guilty to justice.David Lagercrantz captures the tone of Stieg Larsson's original series, and brings forward a convincing version of Salander and Blomkvist. The shadowy horror that hounds Salander, and the touching confidence in the power of a magazine article to restore justice (Larsson was a journalist), are familiar and confidently handled. Lagercrantz has a few quirks as a writer that weaken the books somewhat: he has a habit of getting distracted by the second-by-second details of relatively minor events, and then dashing over larger developments with unengaging tell-don't-show exposition. It's not bad writing, but in places it feels uneven. Salander's underground network already had the magical powers granted to computer hackers in bad science fiction, and in this novel that silliness seems to get worse. The same is true of the bewilderingly many evil characters, who all seem to be able to call on legions of minions to commit murders, kidnappings, and financial skullduggery at a moment's notice, and cover it all up with ease - in this case without even the benefit of government authority. But the book is fast-paced and entertaining, and grounds its conflicts on (somewhat inflated) issues from the real world.The plot of this installment seems needlessly complex. There are several completely unrelated groups of abusers and evil-doers, who somehow all come together to murder or destroy the same small set of victims. There is extensive backstory on the life history of the victims of two of these different plots, plus, in the second half of the book, repeated back-and-forth time jumping to connect the past to the present in order to preserve the secret-identity twist which is part of one such sub-plot. All together the thing is simply hard to follow, and as the action heats up the book jumps from one sub-plot to another literally every page or two. And, with the new information about Salander's past and how she and her sister had been treated, it now turns out that Salander - whom we already knew had been abused by her secret-agent father, the national intelligence service, and their network of abusive mental health prisons, psychiatrists, and lawyers - was in fact the victim of *another*, completely separate, secret abusive government program with its own staff of criminal psychiatrists and murderous henchmen. This seems rather implausible, even for such an extreme hard-luck case as Lisbeth Salander. Lagercrantz seems to have gotten carried away with himself in this book, which is too bad, because it is the intriguing characters, especially Salander, that made the original stories compelling. Lagercrantz has crafted a bizarrely complicated and less-and-less believable plot which pushes the characters into the background; Salander herself is barely a supporting character in this story.The book is a fun read, but misses some of the high points of Larsson's originals. That is probably inevitable, and Lagercrantz has taken up the burden of Larsson's legacy with verve and ability. This is a worthy addition to the series, though with some imperfections.

Another fast moving, almost as good as the original, story revolving around Lisbeth Solanger. I enjoyed the story but I was left wishing for more development of the two main characters.

Such a great mix of intrigue, culture and characters. Loved it...can't wait for the next one. Hope it is coming out soon.

The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (in Steig Larsson's Millennium world) by David Lagercrantz (translated from Swedish by George Goulding)Good. I wondered if I'd be disappointed after reading a number of Amazon reviews: I wasn't! Does it reach the same level of excellence as the original trilogy? It doesn't, but it was thoroughly entertaining; both exciting and enlightening.

The author did a great job matching the style of the original writer. He also created a compelling story that had lots of twists and turns.

Steig is smiling on David. And the transfer of the torch is breathtaking.Lisbeth Salander could take on a brigade of screaming, bloodthirsty renegades if she had to. And her support group is as strong as well.Now that I have that out of my system, this story will satisfy anyone who has followed Lisbeth Salander. The plot has all of the expected twists and dramatic scenes that you expect from The Girl. Get this book, it's well worth it.

I read this book with great hopes, having quite enjoyed David Lagercrantz's previous book in this series, The Girl In The Spiders Web - his first since carrying on Stieg Larsson's Millennium series.However, like a lot of readers I have been disappointed in The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye.It was good in places, but I really feel this series has now lost it's way somewhat, and for me this book went off on far too many tangents and side-stories, with far too much emphasis being put on these rather than the main plot, which incidentally I thought was rather wishy-washy and not at all gripping or engaging. It could have been a much more action-packed and enthralling.And I agree with reviewers who have described the ending as sudden and abrupt - it all seemed to conclude rather conveniently, as if the author was in a hurry to get the book finished and off to the publisher as soon as possible.So although I have so far loved this series, I think now, with a heavy heart, it is time for me to move onto something else.

I gave David Lagercrantz's The Girl On The Spider's Web two stars, not because it was a bad book, it was OK'ish although Lagercrantz has a habit of repeating things (which although lessened in this book hasn’t gone away) but it just didn’t live up to Stieg Larsson's very high standard and as such was a massive disappointment. However I did say I would read David Lagercrantz's sequel to the sequel but would lower my expectations first.So with lowered expectations I approached "The Girl Who Takes an Eye For an Eye"; and while this is a sequel the sequencing is more about the timeline than the plot, the link between the two books being a bit too flimsy. The story opens with Lisbeth Salander in prison as a consequence of her role in the previous book, and that's basically the link. However Lisbeth is relegated to a walk-on part in her own story as the focus throughout this book is very much elsewhere. Not all the old characters make a return, some appear but some are only referenced and don't put in an appearance, and although this is a positive step forward you do have to know Lisbeth Salander's back-story to understand many of the references making this a book for Millennium obsessives and not Lisbeth Salander virgins, it just wouldn’t work as a standalone.Overall the story is weak; the start is pretty feeble - you can see what's coming with your eyes closed; I didn’t like the middle bit with the "present-and-18-months-ago" structure that suddenly appears and impacts the flow of the book; and the ending, as other reviewers have said is a bit abrupt (to meet a publishing deadline?); and is the bit about a financial crash a teaser for the next book or was I missing something?So it's three stars from me, but that's one more than last time. Book 6, David Lagercrantz's book 3, is on the way and like an addict I guess I will read it, but it's going to be make or break for me next time.

I tried to post this with NO STARS but Amazon wouldn't let me write the review then. WHAT AN APPALLING TRAVESTY this book is - Banal, Boring, a complete Betrayal of Stieg Larsson and his genius characters, Salender and Blumqvist. I don't think there has ever been a more CYNICAL RIPOFF in the world of publishing - it represents the total debasement of a shining literary legacy in search of a quick buck. SHAME on ALL involved for so besmirching the quality of Larsson's creation!

At times this book is a disgrace to the original millennium trilogy, that's the first thing to say. The story however is in the main good, it's the constant switching from one person's story to the next that I found most annoying, just as I was getting interested in one back story it ended and went on to another.At times I felt like cutting the book up and rearranging the back stories so it made for easier reading.One final point I would read for an hour and realise I had only read 30 or so pages. This made the book sees so slow . I then checked the paperback version and its page numbering is nearly 100 more, at least they could off got that right.If there is another book it's going yo have to be a stonker to get me to buy it, stick with the first 4 books these are first class

In general I was disappointed by this book. I ordered a Kindle preview but what I got was only about the author, not a sample of the text. As the book only cost me 99 pence I haven't lost much. The plot was not too bad but the author seemed to run out of steam towards the end. I read it once only, whereas the Larsson trilogy I have read several times and will do so again. Originally I had decided not to read these extra books - I should have stuck to that decision. I have deleted The girl who takes an eye etc from my library.