{"id":18410,"date":"2015-11-15T14:36:06","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T04:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=18410"},"modified":"2015-11-15T14:36:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T04:36:06","slug":"the-girl-in-the-spiders-web-by-david-lagercrantz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=18410","title":{"rendered":"The Girl In The Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tfwbookclub\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"girlwithspiderweb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Note: \u00a0This review contains spoilers.<\/p>\n

“This story begins with a dream, and not a particularly spectacular one at that. \u00a0Just a hand beating rhythmically and relentlessly on a mattress in a room on Lundagatan.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet it still gets Lisbeth Salander out of her bed and in the early light of dawn.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0S<\/span>tieg Larsson never lived to see the popularity of his Millenium<\/em> series, passing away of a heart attack before the books found a publisher and subsequent world wide fame. \u00a0Larsson originally wrote the books recreationally and although the existing trilogy offers some closure in the story of Lisbeth Salander – computer hacker extraordinaire and ass kicking avenger of wronged women – bringing down her father’s criminal empire, there was still plenty of material that remained unresolved. \u00a0The greatest unfinished storyline was the fate of Lisbeth’s missing twin sister who was supposedly equally as brilliant and remarkable as the heroine we know.<\/p>\n

David Lagercrantz picks up the story where Larsson left off with this new instalment in the\u00a0Millenium<\/em> series titled\u00a0The Girl In The Spider’s Web<\/em>. \u00a0Years after the events of\u00a0The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest<\/em>,\u00a0we are reintroduced to the many familiar faces of the series. \u00a0Not only do Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist return, so do the rest of the Millenium magazine staff (Erika, Malin etc) as well as Lisbeth’s guardian Holger Palmgren and everyone’s favourite gumshoe D.I Bublanski.<\/p>\n

The opening chapters of\u00a0The Girl In The Spider’s Web<\/em> made a number of immediate impressions on me. \u00a0Firstly, it was nice to revisit these characters. \u00a0I like Lisbeth and Mikael a lot. \u00a0They are both delightfully idealistic social avengers, waging a never ending war against right wing extremists. \u00a0Lagercrantz describes a moment when online trolls are abusing an asylum seeker in the comments section of a news article to which Salander reacts by tracing their IPs, finding out all of their real life names and occupations and posting them online for all to see. \u00a0It’s patently ridiculous but a fun bit of escapism. \u00a0Salander is basically the fictional embodiment of a ‘social justice warrior’.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Secondly, I realized that bringing these characters into 2015 presents the author will plenty of new material. \u00a0When you consider that the original trilogy was completed before 2004, it means that these characters – a renowned hacker and a famous journalist – never had an opportunity to experience the social media revolution or the death of print media. \u00a0And when the story begins by introducing characters from the NSA, you realize that there are plenty of real world events that Lagercrantz could draw inspiration from that are relevant to the Millenium<\/em> series. \u00a0Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, the Charlie Hebdo shootings….in many ways the world today is a very different one from the one that Larsson lived in a decade ago.<\/p>\n

\"lisbeth\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Any time a book series changes authors can be a dicey proposition. \u00a0Who do you aim to please? \u00a0Do you try and stay faithful to the style and content of the\u00a0original author or do you strike out and do your own thing? \u00a0I felt that David Lagercrantz retains the themes and ethos of Larsson’s vision – namely a crusade against misogynists and organized crime – but he makes a distinctive shift in the tone and pace of the storytelling.<\/p>\n

Casting my mind back to\u00a0The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo<\/em>, the murder mystery of Harriet Vanger unfolds at a slow and methodical pace. \u00a0Larsson wrote at length about the Vanger corporation included lengthy passages dedicated to describing their acts of corporate espionage as well as their complicated family lineage. \u00a0Mikael Blomkvist spends much of the first book researching Harriet’s disappearance which mostly involves him sitting in a remote cabin, reading old newspaper clippings. \u00a0The story does pick up its pace as it reaches its conclusion and the subsequent books would up the ante by introducing some bikie gangs but there was still a very deliberate sense of pace about the proceedings.<\/p>\n

By comparison,\u00a0The Girl In The Spider’s Web\u00a0<\/em>flies out of the blocks. \u00a0The story begins with a brilliant computer scientist – Frans Balder – dramatically regaining custody of his autistic savant child from his wife and her abusive partner. \u00a0He is contacted by a member of the NSA who informs him that some hostile forces may be out to get him. \u00a0Not longer after, we are cast headlong into a high speed thriller that involves shoot outs, assassins, car chases and kidnappings.<\/p>\n

If\u00a0The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo<\/em>\u00a0draws its influences from Agatha Christie and Pippie Longstockings,\u00a0The Girl In The Spider’s Web<\/em> feels like you’re reading the transcript of an episode of\u00a024<\/em>. \u00a0Lisbeth Salander, who once got her revenge on evil men by outsmarting them in a game of wits, is now also a physically dominant ass-kicking machine who beats down her oppressors as well as outsmarting them. \u00a0A lot of the plot developments in\u00a0The Girl In The Spider’s Web<\/em> are not the result of research and detective work by Mikael Blomkvist but contrivances drawn from characters marching headlong into danger\u00a0– like a scientist ignoring a phone call explicitly telling them to leave home or a journalist who has important information getting distracted by a mysterious woman inviting them into a hotel room when they were on the way to tell someone critical information.<\/p>\n

One of the clumsiest revelations in\u00a0The Girl In The Spider’s Web<\/em> is that almost all the characters involved with Lisbeth’s hacking network, both allies and enemies – are named after Marvel Comics Avengers characters (no, seriously). \u00a0I have no idea if this was Larsson’s original plan\u00a0or if this is a Lagercrantz special. \u00a0Either way, it’s pretty silly. \u00a0But upon reflection, perhaps its just indicative of the direction that the story is now headed. \u00a0Lisbeth Salander basically is<\/i> a super hero at this stage. \u00a0And when we finally have the big reveal and are introduced to her estranged twin Camilla Salander, we learn that she’s basically Lisbeth’s diametrically opposed super villain who is just as intelligent and resourceful but she applies those talents to working as a criminal mastermind.<\/p>\n

Not a whole lot gets resolved in this book. \u00a0It’s more of a series reboot, laying the cards on the table for future books. \u00a0Lisbeth and Mikael are back, but not as we know them. \u00a0The times have changed, the author has changed and the stakes have\u00a0been raised. \u00a0Lagercrantz is taking the series down a more action oriented path but perhaps thats no bad thing. \u00a0I look forward to seeing how it plays out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series is revived with a new author and a new direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[2314,2316,446,2313,2315,712],"class_list":["post-18410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-club","tag-david-lagercrantz","tag-lisbeth-salander","tag-stieg-larsson","tag-tfw-book-club","tag-the-girl-in-the-spiders-web","tag-the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18410"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18427,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18410\/revisions\/18427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}