Review: The Girl in the Eagle's Talons

The Girl in the Eagle's Talons by Karin Smirnoff
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Stieg Larsson allegedly had plans for as many as ten novels with Lisbeth Salander, but ever since his death, and now with a second Swedish publisher taking over rights to this series and handing the reins to yet another author, it's become more clear than ever that this series really should never have continued without its original creator. The trilogy that David Lagercrantz wrote from 2015-19 at least started out reasonably well only to fizzle into forgettability - if I were to go back and reread them, I'd almost certainly knock off stars from my original hyped-up ratings and reviews. Karin Smirnoff starts a new trilogy here that's a mixed bag right from the start. At least Lisbeth gets to finally bond with a blood relative (after a fashion) with whom she has much more in common than, say, Camilla or Zala. Her niece Svala takes so much more after her, and it's interesting to see this kind of dynamic which neither Larsson nor Lagercrantz attempted. Unfortunately, Smirnoff doesn't know what to do with Blomkvist and saddles him with a pathetic and boring storyline that had me skimming pages just to get back to Lisbeth (even Larsson was prone to this flaw, but at least Blomkvist really felt like a character with agency and personality in the old days, even if Larsson idealized him in certain uncomfortable ways.) Not to mention, the book opens with some pretty gross necrophiliac type content, which really soured the experience for me. At this point, I don't see myself continuing the series...although maybe if the next one shows up on the Lucky Day table at the library in a couple of years and I've got a dearth of books on hand, who knows.

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