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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
adventurous
medium-paced
Such a pleasure to spend time back in this story arc with these characters. I also very much enjoy the musicality of the Swedish placenames. Solid.
Ending was a bit abrupt but a good addition to the series
Is this the last book? I am sad the series has come to an end but it hadn't been the same after the original trilogy by Steig but I just loved the characters enough that I continued on with the books, hoping the next one would be better - I could now conclusively say, it's been one disappointment after another but I still wanted to finish the series and now I just want to forget the last three books. I honestly can't remember what happened in the sequels Lagercrantz wrote, and the last book's premise was also a bit shaky. There are again death by fire, Lisabeth saving Blomqvist, her turning into some superhero and taking on a whole criminal syndicate at the end - and funnily enough, there wasn't much Lisabeth in the book, it was mostly this whole mystery about the Sherpa. There was no real interaction between Camilia and Lisabeth till the very end and I was preparing for some great showdown, something more poignant and emotional between the two sisters but Camilia's character was a very one-dimensional villainy type - their confrontation felt flat. Overall, it was an average thriller - entertaining enough but again, didn't attain the quality of the original books.
Good suspense and the usual, excellent badassery. :-)
There are certain characters in literary history that leave a distinct impression on you, characters that exude something unique and special that keeps you wanting more, they’re rare, and if an author is lucky then they create only one during their career. Lisbeth Salander is one of those characters, she’s incredibly unique, powerful, intriguing, and stands apart from most empowered women in modern fiction, and it's largely because of her that I continue to read the Millennium saga after the passing of its creator. Even though she’s undergone a change at the hands of the second writer in the series, she stills remains just as fresh and interesting as she was in the very beginning, and even though she occupies hardly any space in this newest volume, her evolution still remains constant.
The Girl Who Lived Twice is an odd entry into the Millennium canon. I can’t quite decide if the book is wholly deficient of good material or if the material is simply so far removed from the established trend of the series that it seems as though it's bad. Mr. Lagercrantz’s writing certainly remains consistent, there is no downturn in quality from that perspective, but the narrative is just so different from the five novels that have come before. Firstly, Lisbeth is barely in the novel, her presence probably occupies only fifty pages of a three-hundred- and forty-page novel. Secondly, there is almost no interaction with Mikael and the magazine. Thirdly, most of this story revolves around a mystery that has no connection to Lisbeth and her circumstances in life, Mr. Lagercrantz attempts to craft a link in the eleventh hour of the narrative but it's clear that its only presence was to attempt to tie it into the backstory of the titular character.
These four elements make for a novel that is unlike any of its predecessors in the series, and it’s a jarring turn because the ending of The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye seems to make a very obvious set-up for the events of this novel. By the end of that story, the Swedish economic system has undergone an attack to try and crash the market and Lisbeth has decided to end the conflict between her and her sister once and for all. Not only that, but this new novel was marketed on the basis of the conflict between Lisbeth and her sister and that it was going to come to a conclusion in this story. That conflict does come to a conclusion, but its far from being the focus of the narrative, and that decision left me highly confused for most of the reading, expecting the story of a dead Sherpa to dovetail with the conflict between Salander and her sister but being completely surprised by the fact that they remain completely separate until the end of the novel.
This isn’t to say that the story of the Sherpa and the government conspiracy that surrounds him isn’t interesting, it is, but it has almost nothing to do with the world and stories that we’ve come to expect in the Millennium universe. Mr. Lagercrantz’s decision to ignore the set-up he provided himself at the end of the last book and follow this alternate plot makes me wonder if he even wants to write in the Millennium series. It’s been confirmed that he won’t be writing another novel in the series, which makes the set-up epilogue even more confusing, but it doesn’t even seem as though he wanted to write this, and to some extent the previous, novel in the series either. Not only is Lisbeth hardly in the book, but Mikael’s presence in the narrative is also reduced, Erika is effectively nowhere to be seen, the rest of the staff of the magazine don’t come up, and most of the narrative is told from people outside the main cast.
The main story revolving around the dead Sherpa is primarily investigated by a new character, who also happens to be Mikael’s femme-de-jour of the novel, and much of the story is covered in flashbacks from the perspective of the people involved. In fact, you could largely remove all of the parts of the story that contain the characters from the previous books and still tell a coherent mystery tale. It’s an incredibly strange aspect of Mr. Lagercrantz’s last entry into the series because it was supposed to be the summation of a trilogy about Salander and her sister. The Girl in the Spiders Web was the initial confrontation between the characters, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye is the fallout from that confrontation and a continuation in respect to the fact that Lisbeth has been properly motivated to bring down her sister, and so The Girl Who Lived Twice should have been the final confrontation between the two of them.
There is a confrontation, but it essentially exists in only two scenes, one at the beginning of the novel and one at the end. That decision not only makes for an incredibly disappointing finale, but it also cheapens the work done by Mr. Lagercrantz in the previous two novels. Lisbeth’s sister, Camilla, is made out to be a mastermind who not only infiltrated the NSA, for reasons that are still not understood, and crashed the Swedish stock exchange through computer hacking, again for reasons not understood. Not only does Mr. Lagercrantz not give us a resolution to the stock exchange hack, but Lisbeth doesn’t even have any trouble tracking and eventually taking down her sister. For all the build-up, the conclusion certainly doesn’t match up.
Perhaps Mr. Lagercrantz never actually wanted to write the Millennium books that he did, maybe initially he was blindsided by the weight of the opportunity only to find that he was unsatisfied writing something that wasn’t wholly his own, but I can only speculate. The Girl Who Lived Twice isn’t a necessarily a bad book, but it is a book that straddles the line between a sequel to previous work and something that stands completely alone, which makes the final result awkward and confusing. I don’t know whether a third writer will take on the characters and world of Millennium but I do know that it’s a good thing Mr. Lagercrantz’s tenure writing the stories is over, his time in the world wasn’t all bad but I’m not convinced that it was good enough to justify the existence of the material it spawned.
The Girl Who Lived Twice is an odd entry into the Millennium canon. I can’t quite decide if the book is wholly deficient of good material or if the material is simply so far removed from the established trend of the series that it seems as though it's bad. Mr. Lagercrantz’s writing certainly remains consistent, there is no downturn in quality from that perspective, but the narrative is just so different from the five novels that have come before. Firstly, Lisbeth is barely in the novel, her presence probably occupies only fifty pages of a three-hundred- and forty-page novel. Secondly, there is almost no interaction with Mikael and the magazine. Thirdly, most of this story revolves around a mystery that has no connection to Lisbeth and her circumstances in life, Mr. Lagercrantz attempts to craft a link in the eleventh hour of the narrative but it's clear that its only presence was to attempt to tie it into the backstory of the titular character.
These four elements make for a novel that is unlike any of its predecessors in the series, and it’s a jarring turn because the ending of The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye seems to make a very obvious set-up for the events of this novel. By the end of that story, the Swedish economic system has undergone an attack to try and crash the market and Lisbeth has decided to end the conflict between her and her sister once and for all. Not only that, but this new novel was marketed on the basis of the conflict between Lisbeth and her sister and that it was going to come to a conclusion in this story. That conflict does come to a conclusion, but its far from being the focus of the narrative, and that decision left me highly confused for most of the reading, expecting the story of a dead Sherpa to dovetail with the conflict between Salander and her sister but being completely surprised by the fact that they remain completely separate until the end of the novel.
This isn’t to say that the story of the Sherpa and the government conspiracy that surrounds him isn’t interesting, it is, but it has almost nothing to do with the world and stories that we’ve come to expect in the Millennium universe. Mr. Lagercrantz’s decision to ignore the set-up he provided himself at the end of the last book and follow this alternate plot makes me wonder if he even wants to write in the Millennium series. It’s been confirmed that he won’t be writing another novel in the series, which makes the set-up epilogue even more confusing, but it doesn’t even seem as though he wanted to write this, and to some extent the previous, novel in the series either. Not only is Lisbeth hardly in the book, but Mikael’s presence in the narrative is also reduced, Erika is effectively nowhere to be seen, the rest of the staff of the magazine don’t come up, and most of the narrative is told from people outside the main cast.
The main story revolving around the dead Sherpa is primarily investigated by a new character, who also happens to be Mikael’s femme-de-jour of the novel, and much of the story is covered in flashbacks from the perspective of the people involved. In fact, you could largely remove all of the parts of the story that contain the characters from the previous books and still tell a coherent mystery tale. It’s an incredibly strange aspect of Mr. Lagercrantz’s last entry into the series because it was supposed to be the summation of a trilogy about Salander and her sister. The Girl in the Spiders Web was the initial confrontation between the characters, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye is the fallout from that confrontation and a continuation in respect to the fact that Lisbeth has been properly motivated to bring down her sister, and so The Girl Who Lived Twice should have been the final confrontation between the two of them.
There is a confrontation, but it essentially exists in only two scenes, one at the beginning of the novel and one at the end. That decision not only makes for an incredibly disappointing finale, but it also cheapens the work done by Mr. Lagercrantz in the previous two novels. Lisbeth’s sister, Camilla, is made out to be a mastermind who not only infiltrated the NSA, for reasons that are still not understood, and crashed the Swedish stock exchange through computer hacking, again for reasons not understood. Not only does Mr. Lagercrantz not give us a resolution to the stock exchange hack, but Lisbeth doesn’t even have any trouble tracking and eventually taking down her sister. For all the build-up, the conclusion certainly doesn’t match up.
Perhaps Mr. Lagercrantz never actually wanted to write the Millennium books that he did, maybe initially he was blindsided by the weight of the opportunity only to find that he was unsatisfied writing something that wasn’t wholly his own, but I can only speculate. The Girl Who Lived Twice isn’t a necessarily a bad book, but it is a book that straddles the line between a sequel to previous work and something that stands completely alone, which makes the final result awkward and confusing. I don’t know whether a third writer will take on the characters and world of Millennium but I do know that it’s a good thing Mr. Lagercrantz’s tenure writing the stories is over, his time in the world wasn’t all bad but I’m not convinced that it was good enough to justify the existence of the material it spawned.
I was bored through most of it and there just seemed to be too many plot lines to be fully invested. The ending was good though.
This book wasn't great. I only read it for the character. At least Lisbeth Salander was featured more in this book than the last. Unfortunately, it still did not impress me much. I would give it a 3.7/5