2.5 stars

gahhhhh i really wanted to love the sequels, as i desperately want more lisbeth salander, but this just falls short for me.

initially i was inclined to think it might be a translation issue, but the more i read, the more i became convinced this was not the case. i think the main problem this book suffers from is its lack of all the subtlety of larsson's original books, and as a result, his cast of morally grey characters are painted in starker black and whites, which is far less interesting. the word evil is thrown around a lot, letting us know in no uncertain terms who the bad guys are; for this reason, most characters (good and bad) end up feeling more like caricatures of their past selves. this book is just as long as the others but i felt like i hardly spent time with anyone at all; they were just going thru the motions without me ever understanding their psychology. the strength of larsson's writing for me always lay in his ability to reveal a person's true character thru their routine of mundane things. lagercrantz attempts to mimic larsson's style of giving background on every minor background character, but because it never delves into their psychology, it comes off as dragging rather than endearing.

from the beginning, i was wary of august. i've grown very tired of the autistic savant child being prized for his gifts and not valued as an actual child. frans even acknowledges this at one point, but it doesn't excuse the fact that august is undeniably used as a narrative prosthesis to move the plot along. the autistic superhero in particular is a trope that irks me, so the fact that the entire "car chase" of a plot, as it were, is based around trying to convince this nonverbal savant child to draw the face of his father's killer did not sit right with me. there was an opportunity to discuss his autism in relation to lisbeth's own — i know her diagnosis hasn't been made explicit, but it was all but confirmed in the last book by andersson — but that too fell flat. her interactions w august feel more transactional with the mathematics they do together, and august is once again prostheticised in effort to illustrate his "usefulness". this is supposed to show that despite his autism and nonverbal behaviour, he has value; i feel like i don't need to explain why this trope is continually harmful.

plot wise: what the fuck is going on? the appeal of lisbeth salander novels is her strong moral compass and desire for justice regardless of the law; she is the woman who hates men who hate women. why are we getting into AI/religion/the meaning of being human? which isn't to say that there can't be overlap, it just feels like a strange swerve. of course, at the end you find out that lisbeth had been hacking the nsa to expose Camilla's role in the spider conspiracy, but even that felt out of character.

i feel like i shouldn't be surprised that camilla ended up being the big bad, but i am, and i'm a bit disappointed about it. as much as i loved the zalachenko storyline, i feel like making camilla a sociopathic sadist like her father was ... strange. i think it could've been done well, but the way that camilla was described was almost laughable. she's described as beautiful, charismatic, and manipulative; whenever people meet her, they instantly fall under her spell and swear she can do no wrong. i do mean her spell: the descriptions of camilla from other ppl's pov feel so absurd it sounded like magical realism. her beauty was so great it caused people to push aside the red flags they recognised and ignore gut feelings that someone was wrong? yeah, okay. the descriptions of her made her out to be this magical femme fatale, which is another trope i'm tired of. again, i think a camilla story line could be done well, but it would really have to be done explicitly pitting the sisters against each other and contrasting each other's strengths and weaknesses. at this point, neither of them seem genuinely formidable to me, but i would love for them to be.

back to plot: lisbeth's meddling landed mikael the perfect scoop but only served to annoy camilla; it seems like it was done for mikael's benefit, but there's no way lisbeth would conduct this entire operation for him, nor would she concoct a half-formed blow with how much consequence analysis she does.

so let's talk about the elephant in the room: this is not the lisbeth you know. the lisbeth here is shockingly sloppy and strangely proud. she shows off when she hacks the nsa, which leads to her identity as Wasp being compromised by an nsa worker. lisbeth's whole thing is being inconspicuous, and she's just uncharacteristically sloppy. she talks way more in this book, and gives away a lot of her secrets unnecessarily in this way. the way she threatens lasse and roger are through unconvincing threats of physical violence, and it makes me wonder how this is the same girl who punished bjurman. lisbeth has always treated physical violence as a last choice resort, this kind of aggression makes her seem like a cartoonish vigilante. which, you know what, might actually have been the point since they've decided to make lisbeth's literal origin story marvel comic books?? like. okay. it's not the worst thing ever, but in light of the rest of the choices made, it just feels like a stilted vigilante superhero story instead of political conspiracy thriller.
i'm also disappointed that lisbeth's neurodivergent traits were toned down here. all of her "unsurly" behaviours were emphasised without any of the insight into lisbeth's pov that makes up the payoff for this cruel treatment of her. thru her pov, we can understand how her brain works and have empathy for her neurodivergence and her trauma. this version of lisbeth salander just feels like a shell thru which the author doles out justice to corrupt authorities.


anyhoo i'm still gonna read the rest of them