I am glad I finally read The Girl in the Spider's Web, but it absolutely was nowhere near as good as the original series. In fact, there were parts that I found to be just downright irrelevant and even, dare I say, stupid.
There were also several aspects to the story that simply weren't well developed and others that were so incongruous with the original series that they made it difficult to take much of the novel seriously.
Lisbeth Salander is one of my favorite literary characters, and Lagercrantz dropped some of the tight, focused aspects of her personality while adding in other details that didn't fit with the character all that well. I wondered how much of this was due to Lagercrantz's own spin on the series versus Larsson's original notes for the book versus a lack of attention to detail by Lagercrantz with regard to the original series.
My other issue with this book is the translation. Perhaps it was translated for a British audience? I don't know...there were numerous spots where the translation felt clunky and where terms that were particularly colloquial were used (for example "sticky plaster" instead of "Band-Aid" or "bandage").
In general, I found the discrepancies between this novel and the original series to be quite glaring and I do NOT recommend this book.
In fact, I found the differences to be so huge and the side stories or background details so odd that I actually want to go back through the original three books and this one so I can map out all of the details--every little one!--to see if my impressions of this book are accurate or if I'm forgetting details of the original series. So, you may see some related posts coming out soon!
Although there were a few sections of the book and story that I liked, overall it was a huge disappointment--so much so that I am NOT linking to Amazon's listing for the book in this post. Instead, check out the four suggested books below, all of which I LOVE and highly recommend:
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