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

This is an incredible novel I devoured it in just over a day Lisbeth Salander is one of my favorite characters of all time I'm so glad the authors that have taken over for Stieg Larson have done such a fantastic job of continuing her story of protecting the underdogs and oppressed people who need help great character's and story lines I couldn't put it down I highly recommend this book

While this is a good read and an interesting continuation to Steig Larsson's Lisbeth Salander series, it just doesn't have the same connection with the usual characters, or the same back build for new characters. Simply put, it just isn't quite as good as Steig's books. But neither is it awful.

Yet another amazingly written story in the Lisbeth Salander Saga — Highly Recommend! This is actually my second time reading through the series of books in the Lisbeth Salander saga because I really appreciate the depths of truths in these books that apply so significantly to those of us who have had a very hard path in life inflicted by the violence and tyranny of evil human beings. It’s a genuinely beautiful thing to witness those of us who find true strength in adversity against such evil adversaries and rise above them as they absolutely deserve to…Just as Lisbeth does again and again throughout the series no matter what hellish nightmare is thrown her way. It’s uplifting, inspiring and though her path is unusual compared to those with easy, seemingly normal lives who don’t know such hellish nightmares the very things that make her different make her strong and resilient and truly a force to be reckoned with. I highly recommend the entire series to anyone. I only wish the director(s) and producer(s) who did the first American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie would consider turning the entire rest of the book series into American made movies with the same actors Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara who were outstanding in depicting the series with the honor and truths it should be relaying in Lisbeth’s character and unwavering strength to overcome the adversity that could’ve easily destroyed any other far weaker human being. Many applause!

The girl with the dragon tattoo does it again. All the twists and turns made this a novel I could not put down. I was lost sometimes with all the Swedish turns and cities, but I let my imagination get me back on track. Very well written and just amazing.

Lagercrantz has picked up where Stieg Larsson left off. Like playing a Jimi Hendrix solo it sounds great but it's not an original creation. But I wanted a page Turner this, fit the bill.

I have to admit, it’s been a while since I’ve read the original trilogy but the writing in this book seemed much more amateurish and even cliched to some degree. Some of the actions described felt like they were almost caricature-like which felt lazy. The plot itself was not too bad and kept me hooked so I’ll still give it 3 stars.

The author is no Stieg Larsson, but he did a good job with this book, better than the previous "Girl in the Spider's Web". I've ordered the next in the series, "The Girl Who Lived Twice", as well as "The Girl in the Eagle's Talons", by yet another author. Salander is a most entertaining protagonist, and I'm very glad others have stepped up to continue her story.

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

I started reading the Millenium series of books because of the recent movie about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I quickly became hooked, and have now read all five of the books, and have also seen the American version of the movie and all three of the Swedish versions, which I think are markedly better.If I were to start reading the books anew, I would keep a notebook with the names and significant details of all of the characters, since the names are Swedish and it's easy to get the characters confused. I would also have fairly detailed maps of Sweden and Stockholm, to trace the action. And, because I like to try to sound out the names of the characters, I would have some kind of guide to Swedish pronunciation, since the names have diacritical marks that are unfamiliar to English readers.You can't jump into the middle of these books, each one builds on characters and actions from previous books. The writing style, or perhaps the translator's style, changes between the third and fourth books, as might be expected when both the author and the translator change. But that is only a minor source of discomfort.One more book is necessary to wrap up the final loose end of the overall story. It appears that the sixth book will be published in August of this year.

David Lagercrantz has delivered his second as the fifth in the millennium series started by Steg Larson (dead). I never thought it could be done. My hat is off to David plus his entire team that has continued to deliver on the masterpieces that Larson started. Lisbeth Salander came alive off the pages with such rip roaring fury and all the characters around her were so involved in the twisted life that exploded, imploded, and rallied on through four books to the fifth. The fifth kicks off right where the fourth stopped. So be sure you have read them first. This is not a starter book!It is quite interesting as to how many avenues David takes you down at the same time and then how they become so intertwined. I am not going to say who, when, where...but I became extremely irritated at who was involved in the body count on this book.There is an underlying current in this book that leaves bread crumbs for one or two more books at least. And I have my suspicions of some of the players (lips sealed). I loved the book but you will not find it solely focussing on Salander. However if David Lagercrantz is willing to go on we are in for some great novels forthcoming. I am looking forward to them. Read this book and think about the possible plots. Hugs.

“Millennium Series” has been taking on new aspect. The gist of the story has been shifted to elucidation of secrets in the Salander’s traumatic childhood from the investigation targets which Mikael Blomkvist is chasing after. David Lagercrantz put a new subtitle on this series as “A Lisbeth Salander Novel” as soon as he has taken over the project. To begin with, why Salander embellish herself with a dragon tattoo that never goes away. In “The Girl Who Takes An Eye For Eye,” he gives us a hint on this. An explanation is clear, however, not enough for our comprehension. We are better to widen our imagination from there. Lagercrantz brings up two fundamental problems before us by taking up two core cases, bullying the week and gifted twins. One thing he points out in this book is misogyny which is underlying deeply in Europeans. Helping Faria Kazi, a Bangladesh refugee who has killed her brother, Salander makes the hushed up murder incident in the past come to the front. Movement recognition technology, Salander uses to identify a criminal, is also getting accepted in the real world, though still be in it’s infancy. The case also casts a light on the current Islamist activity in Sweden. Lagercrantz drops a hint of Camilla’s participation to this movement.The other doubt is what is a primary factor in shaping our personalities, heredity or environment? The leading role is now taken by Salander. She insinuates existence of gifted twins to Blomkvist without revealing her real intention. Blomkvist’s persistence in pursuing the truth is compelling as ever. He barely founds his way to the sealed Project 9. The Registry for the Study of Genetics and Social Environment is explained to have worked for producing stronger and better balanced individuals. But, what for? The story implies how the classic nature versus nurture debate had become politicized long ago. Wicked Rakel Greitz, a woman with a birthmark of fire, tries hard to bury the real objectives of this project being shrouded in the past. Salander isn’t a lone wolf any more, she can expect a support from a chief inspector, Jan Bublanski, and a defense lawyer, Annika Giannini. Salander puts criminals into the judicial authorities’ hands without revenging them in person.Salander’s memorial address for Holger Palmgren is a choking moment. We can feel her iron determination to take an eye for an eye against any injustice. Can Salander clarify the whole story of her traumatic childhood? Is there a Salander’s direct confrontation with Camilla in the next episode? Can hardly wait for the next any more.

This is the second volume in Lagercrantz’s continuation of the late Stieg Larsson’s mystery series starring superhacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc.). As with the first one, I found it to be a worthy extension, though not as complex as Larsson’s books.This book has rather less of both Salander (a pity) and Blomkvist (fine with me) than I would have expected based on previous books. The highlights here are two other stories, one of two men who at first seem to have nothing in common but eventually discover a very close connection indeed, and one of a young Islamic woman from Bangladesh who is a fellow prisoner in the jail to which Salander has been sent for a short period in the wake of her previous adventures. The young woman, Faria, is abused by both another prisoner and her ultra-religious family, and Salander determines to rescue her.Both stories are complex and emotionally involving, and the first one has connections with Salander’s own hair-raising background, even though she herself doesn’t know the two men. Naturally there are several mysteries to be solved, as well as suspenseful action. The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the ending, which seemed both abrupt and puzzling. It wrapped up everything, or almost everything, but it did so in rather a hurry and then set up a cliff-hanger situation for the Swedish (and maybe world) economy that echoed some events early in the book but was not explained or resolved. I suppose it’s a lead-in to the next book, but that’s an authorial trick I’m not fond of; writers should have the self-confidence to believe that readers will follow them into the next volume without having to be tortured into doing so.

This is the fifth book in the millennial series staring an incredible character, Lisbeth Salander, The first three books were written by Stieg Larsson and the last two by David Lagercrantz, adequately continuing the wonderful work of Larsson. I would strongly recommend reading the prior four books before taking on The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye. The books are loaded with fascinating characters--non more so than Lisbeth herself--some of whom readers will love and others they will loathe. I'd recommend the movies on the first three books as well. The fourth book's movie is in the process of being made, and due for showing in 2018. I'd give the four previous books five stars. The only reason I gave this book four stars is because it did not have enough of Lisbeth in it. That said, the central plot is fascinating and clearly well-researched. The book is very good, and a fun read. Again, had Lisbeth showed her skills more frequently in this book, it would clearly have been a five-star rating by me. If readers want to chance the Eye for an Eye edition before The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked in the Hornet's Nest, and The Girl in the Spider's Web (in order) they will enjoy Eye for an Eye but will have very little understanding of some of the really good and really despicable people in Salander's life.

Huh. I'm not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, it was nice to get more adventures of Blomkvist and Salander, and I feel that the author handles them well. On the other hand, the story felt muddled and a bit boring. Part of the problem here is that the stakes seem really low. Halfway through the book, it's unclear what the central mystery is really about, or why the characters are doing what they are doing and acting so urgently. An investigation kicked off by... discrepancies in researching Salander's parents? It doesn't even make any sense. And yes, we've already been down that road.I really liked "The Girl in the Spider's Web" and was therefore disappointed that the author did not pick up the dangling plot line with Camilla and the Spider Society. He ignored that entirely, and instead introduced several new characters with long plot lines, going back and forth between the present and past. I had a hard time caring about these people, and it wasn't made clear until very late in the book why I should care about them at all."The Girl who Takes an Eye for an Eye". That title itself doesn't sound good and doesn't make sense. I get the biblical reference but that's got nothing to do with this story. I guess they're running out of stuff to tack on to "The Girl..."I still think this author has done a pretty good job of updating the tech and the setting to current events. Here we have fallout from a refugee crisis, Muslim extremist immigrants, global warming, and the volatility of the stock market. It's interesting to see how the author incorporates these things.I also liked the story of Salander in prison. It was pretty good.Overall this book is okay, but I feel like it is a low point in this series. The author is good though and I believe he can do better, as demonstrated by the previous book. I hope he continues, and I will buy the next book. I'm not giving up on it yet.

Actual rating: 2.5 stars.By now everyone knows David Lagencrantz is writing continuation novels based on Stieg Larsson's original Millenium Trilogy, so I won't comment on that. In my review of Lagencrantz' first, "The Girl in the Spider's Web," I said this:I think Lagercrantz has successfully recreated the main characters from Larsson's previous novels. He has also crafted a great set of villains and an appropriately elaborate plot, and in these aspects this novel seems a worthy continuation of the Millennium series.I went on, however, to say this:... my affection for Mikael and Lisbeth (and many other familiar characters from the first three novels) carried me through some clumsy, wooden passages. Lagercrantz takes shortcuts by stepping in as omniscient narrator to explain large sections of the backstory.I can't say much different about this one, Lagencrantz' second attempt at a Lisbeth Salander novel. His main characters are still faithful to Larsson's originals. His plot is complex enough to be Larsson-worthy. Still, something seems missing this time around. I can't put my finger on exactly what, though.For one thing, this novel seems short, though by page count it compares to Larsson's originals and Lagercrantz' first continuation. The omniscient narrator seems more intrusive, so to be fair I pulled a copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" off the shelf and it turns out Larsson overused it as well. Still, something seems missing. It's almost as if Lisbeth and Mikael have become ghosts, going through the motions in an afterlife. The immediacy and impact of the originals, and even Lagencrantz's first continuation novel, are gone.This is a sign I'm losing interest and getting ready to move on, but Salander and Blomqvist still exert a pull, and I will read the next Lagencrantz continuation. If my reaction then is what it is now, I will indeed move on.

Despite what some reviewers claim, Lisbeth Salander is on stage much more in Lagercrantz's second novel, than in any of Larsson's originals.At the beginning she's in jail and she must deal with one of the two major villains in the novel, Benito, a crewcut mauler, who makes the warden's life hell. Benito likes to torment Faria Kazi, a Moslem woman in jail for murder. Lisbeth is her protector.Mikael Blomkvist, editor of MILLENIUM, an investigative magazine, has an always will be the major character, if not the most popular, in the novel. He takes his cue from Salander to investigate the mistreatment of identical twins. Salander and her malevolent sister were involved in the program. It involved nature versus nurture. The twins were separated early on. One would go to a relatively poor family, the other to a rich family. The theory was that environment would play a role on how both personalities developed. The second villain in the novel, Rakel Greitz, is a psychoanalyst who has gone to insane lengths to keep the program under wraps, including the murder of a significant character.Two other identical twins , Dan Brody and Leo Mannheimer also play a role. Brody was put with a farmer who worked his charges nearly to death. Leo Mannheimer is located with an investment broker and his family. Brody's salvation is the guitar; he becomes a jazz virtuoso; Leo, although adopted, has been tagged to run the company as he has an extremely high IQ. But Leo is miserable; he loves to play the piano, and goes so far as to play concerts.Lisbeth's mentor, Holger Palmgren, who, as we know, saved her from a sexual predator, goes to see her in prison, despite being confined to a wheelchair. He has been given papers by a secretary who worked at the institute that ran the identical twin experiment. It names names and Lisbeth passes them on to Blomkvist.As the story moves along, we eventually find out why Faria Kazi is in jail. It has to do with her family's disapproval of her boyfriend. Her brothers are jihadists; he's much more moderate. Conveniently, Faria's two brothers and Benito join forces against Lisbeth. Of yeah, there's also a motor cycle gang we've met before in the other books, and Dr. Greist employs a thug to do her dirty work.At the end of the novel, Lagercrantz thanks Larsson's brother and father for giving him a chance to continue Larsson's work. According to what I've read, the forth novel was almost complete. Lagercrantz is no Larsson; we shouldn't expect him to be, but he does a capable job developing Lisbeth Salander. My only complaint is the ending sort of fizzles and Lagercrantz leaves room for more torment for Lisbeth as some of her enemies are still alive, and that doesn't include her evil sister who did not appear in this episode.

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.

This is the fifth volume in the Millennium series begun by Stieg Larsson (vols. 1-3), and continued after his death by David Lagercrantz. Of course, the central character is all these books is the effervescent and mysterious Lizbeth Salander, one of the most fascinating and powerful fictional characters that one will encounter. The creation of Lizbeth was one important measure of Larsson's genius. Since this is Scandinavian crime fiction at its best, the book is extremely well written, though a profusion of subplots and the introduction of many important new characters can make following the story complicated. This is definitely not a book to nod off with in bed--concentration is required to grasp all the many threads thrown out by the author. That said, the author has attained a major accomplishment--in both his books he has captured and expanded the essence of Salander as she continues to evolve. In that regard, the baton has been passed to the right person.The usual elements of the series are here in evidence: Lizbeth spends time in a hostile prison environment; the second main character remains journalist Mikael Blomkvist; much of the plot relates back to the childhood of Salander when evil was afoot; her buddies in the Hacker Republic make a brief appearance, as does the criminal motorcycle club Lizabeth has tangled with previously; and Chief Inspector Bublanski is there to offer occasional police assistance. One of the major pluses of the series is that plots often involve educating the reader about some new technical or scientific area, such as advanced computer technology. That is true of this volume as well where we lean a bit about stock manipulation and a lot about the area of twin studies. The book runs 347 pages, but setting the plot takes many pages and I believe the story does not begin to move until Part II (at p. 177), and really takes off beginning in Part III (p. 235). While never the "page turner" of the Larsson volumes, the novel is quite engrossing. The miscreants who are the villains are as disgusting and formidable as in the previous volumes, in the process brutally murdering one of the continuing characters from the previous volumes.While I have visited Stockholm, a magnificent city, I am not sufficiently familiar with its layout to appreciate the various areas designated by their Swedish names where the action occurs, even with a superb translation, as this is. I wish there were some way to educate the reader (perhaps via a map) as to where these various locales are situated. My basic assessment of the novel is that it is on the cusp between 4 and 5, but definitely leaning toward 5, hence my evaluation. For fans of the series, simply a must read. For those who have not read the previous 4 volumes, a definite inducement to grab a copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and join the fun. The signs are present that the author intends at least one further volume where I am sure Lizbeth will evolve further. I for one am quite interested in how the series will continue to develop.