Title: The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (Millennium #5)
Author: David Lagercrantz
Rating: ★★½
Summary: Lisbeth Salander has never been able to uncover the most telling facts of her traumatic childhood, the secrets that might finally, fully explain her to herself. Now, when she sees a chance to uncover them once and for all, she enlists the help of Mikael Blomkvist, the editor of the muckraking, investigative journal Millennium. And she will let nothing stop her…
Lagercrantz certainly tries to live up to Stieg Larsson’s writing, but so far neither The Girl in the Spider’s Web nor The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye live up to the breathless anticipation I felt while reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (even after I’d already seen the movie). A lot of things happen in this installment – not all of which seem very reasonable – and it comes off feeling more of a Mikael Blomkvist story than a Lisbeth Salander one. Even though I wasn’t in love with Larsson’s writing style, his books didn’t feel so contrived, the action always revved up to eleven.
However, as long as Salander lives on in some way, I will keep reading her story – but the over-heightened plot (which almost bordered on bland) and the ‘wtf was that??’ ending just proves that Lagercrantz lacks the je ne sais quoi which made Larsson so famous.
thewasofshall.me 