Dnf ( )

My guess is that it is time to retire Blomkvist and Lisbeth after this book as the quality was only a fraction of the books in the Steig Larsson franchise. Just writing the word franchise in relation to books makes my heart quiver. The characters were not the strength and depth of the originals and parts of the plot were stretched a little thin.

Blomkvist travels up to the north of Sweden for his daughter's marriage to a man that appears to be more of a Bond villain. Extremely well-dressed, he is the mayor of the town, fingers in all the pies and determining what goes forward and what doesn't in planning. That is until he meets Branco, a villain worthy of taking him on, who then kidnaps his son to get what he wants, which is the contract to build renewable energy plants on forested land.

Lisbeth finds herself up in the north as the only living relative of a girl whose mother has disappeared. On the trail of finding the mother, she meets up with Blomkvist and the two stories merge. Yes, there are fights, the bikers make an appearance again and the girl is a younger version of Lisbeth.

Although the story was dressed up as an eco-crime, in actual fact that was a fairly superficial element of the story. Branco could have headed up any crime gang because in fact the eco element had no part in how the plot moved on, it just framed it.

Oh, how disappointing. ( )

This was not a worthy addition to “The Girl Who …” series. Very confusing and hard to follow. The characters had no energy or goals. The villains were pathetic, and the violence was over the top. ( )

This novel added to the series does not have half of the intensity of the previous novels. It was a brave and admirable attempt for Karin Smirnoff in wanting to continue this story. The characters of Lisbaeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist come alive off the pages from the original books by Stieg Larsson. Those are big shoes to fill and unfortunately I found this to be a watered down comparison. I was disappointed as I anticipated the feeling of suspense and danger experienced previously. I think that David Langerkrantz made a decent contribution with his 3 additions.

It was nice to consider how Lisbeth handled her devious sister Camilla's suicide leaving her daughter Svala in Lizbeth's care. It seems that criminal minds run in the family as this talented 13 year-old is capable of safe cracking as a means of paying off her mother's "debt". Lisbeth has always been somewhat of a rebellious loner who didn't cry when her father, head of a dangerous criminal empire, died. Then, there's Mikael Blomkvist who had wrapped affairs with Millennium publication. His daughter Pernilla is getting married to Henry Salo who happens to be a gambler. Of course, things don't go as planned and bullets fly and people get killed.

I think this series needs to RIP, please before we forget how great a story Stieg Larsson created. ( )

I have loved these books, even the ones written by other authors. However, Lisbeth shows up late in this book and just doesn't have much of her normal flair for giving the villans their just due. ( )