Book Review: The Girl in the Spider's Web

I really enjoyed the Millennium trilogy (you can read reviews of two of the trilogy The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire). Although I thought at times it got a little long in the tooth and the plausibility started to run out of control they were interesting mysteries. After the passing of Stiegg Larson and hearing that David Lagercrantz would pick up where Stieg left off and write the fourth book in the "trilogy" I have to say I was apprehensive. For those that might worries that David Lagercrantz would change the tone or direction of the series I can say that you have nothing to worry about. There is very little in The Girl in the Spider's Web that distinguishes itself as written by anyone but Stieg Larson. 

And that might be the biggest fault I have with the book. The Girl in the Spider's Web brings us back to both Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist a short time after the end of the trilogy. The two haven't been in contact since and you  get to go along for a ride on an artificial intelligence case that the two come together again to solve (sort of). The biggest issue I had with The Girl in the Spider's Web was that this case has thrown any sense of reality out the window. There are things that Lagercrantz asks the reader to accept that are just insane. There were at least a half dozen instances when I visibly scoffed and muttered that the writing just felt lazy. I don't want to spoil anything, but nothing in this book feels set in reality. Lisbeth at this point has become a super hero, and Blomkvist might as well be Clark Kent at this point.

It's a shame too because I think the writing, the setting, and even the plot were really interesting. The problem is that the actions in which our leads take to resolve said areas of the plot are ridiculous. I enjoyed the read but could not get around how insane the story gets. It's a shame too because although Stieg showed signs of making these characters larger then life they had a bit more grounding. Now all the rules of real life have been thrown out the window and we are left with a book that's entertaining but has no staying power.