Book five of six. I’m not going to lie…the series started off so well, but I feel it petering out. I’m sure that David Lagercrantz is a talented author in his own right, but I’m learning that he had no business picking up this series. However, I do my best to always finish what I start, so I will finish the entire series. Now, let’s talk about The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye.

The Story

Lisbeth Salander – the girl with the dragon tattoo, the brilliant hacker, the obstinate outsider, the volatile seeker of justice for herself and others – 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 nothing will stop her – not the anti-Muslim gang she enrages by rescuing a young woman from their brutality; not the deadly reach from inside the Russian mafia of her long-lost twin sister, Camilla; and not the people who will do anything to keep buried knowledge of a sinister pseudo-scientific experiment known only as The Registry. Once again, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, together, are the fierce heart of a thrilling full-tilt novel that takes on some of the most insidious problems facing the world at this very moment.

My Thoughts

The more I think about David Lagercrantz picking up the series, the less I like it. Lisbeth and Michael are hardly intertwined characters anymore. In fact, they both have such separate stories that the books don’t even makes sense following them both.

In The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, Lisbeth is in prison, which is ridiculous enough, but so be it. She has a run in with a gang in the prison. There is an entire storyline around why one young woman was imprisoned. It honestly served zero purpose in the long run, except to give Lisbeth something to fight. Her sister, after so much build up in Spider’s Web, was hardly even mentioned.

As for Mikael, his storyline was a bit more intriguing. Apparently there is an entity known only as The Registry. After Lisbeth’s guardian is murdered (spoiler alert), Mikael gets to the bottom of The Registry and it’s connection to Lisbeth. I can’t say much more here without giving it away, but his whole motivation and “case” was very interesting.

Now, I’m already a little over halfway through the final book in the series, and it’s a good bit of the same. Lisbeth and Mikael are interacting a bit more, AND their stories seem to actually match.

I may be speaking prematurely, but I am fairly certain that I will be selling or donating the newest three books in the series, and keeping the original three on my shelf.

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