The Girl in the Spider's Web cover art

The Girl in the Spider's Web

Continuing Stieg Larsson's Dragon Tattoo Series, Book 4

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The Girl in the Spider's Web

By: David Lagercrantz, George Goulding - translator
Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
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About this listen

Mikael Blomkvist is contacted by renowned scientist Professor Balder. Fearing for his life, but more concerned for his son's well-being, Balder wants Millennium to publish his story.

More interesting to Blomkvist than Balder's advances in Artificial Intelligence, is his connection with a certain female superhacker.

It seems that Lisbeth Salander, like Balder, is a target of ruthless cyber gangsters that will soon bring terror to the streets of Stockholm, the Millennium team, and Blomkvist and Salander themselves.

©2015 David Lagercrantz (P)2015 Quercus Editions Ltd Crime Fiction Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime Mystery

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All stars
Most relevant  
All in all, I thought it was pretty good. Lagercrantz has picked up Larsson's style and pacing pretty well and it helps that the majority of characters are already well-established from the first three books. This gives substantial consistency, as does keeping the redoubtable Saul Reichlin as narrator. The storyline is a fairly natural extension from Larsson’s original series, develops the situation nicely – and leaves the door wide open for another book in due course.

Keeping a best-selling series going after the original author’s death is bound to fraught and polarise opinion, as indicated by other reviews. I’m sure the publishers don’t mind too much so long as people pay up - and I think this one is good value and hope you enjoy it.

4th in the Trilogy!

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If you could sum up The Girl in the Spider's Web in three words, what would they be?

Exciting, characterful, unpredictable

What did you like best about this story?

The characters stayed true to the way they were in the first three books

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me anxious that some of my favourite characters might get bumped off.

As good as the first three books

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I lost interest about half way through..the basis of the story was good, but it weakened in the second half. In my view Saul Reichlin was not the right person to narrate..his voice isn't dark enough, Sean Barratt would have been a better choice.

Lost interest......

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An intermittently successful attempt to follow on from the originals with some parts getting the level of detail spot on, and others either resorting to cliche or unrealistic monologue. The narration was perfect, as expected.

An impossible task

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This is very poorly written, but the plotting is good and if you liked the previous books in the series it is likely you would like this one as well.

Plot is everything

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I found it frustrating that the narrator was not as assured and passionate as was warranted by the subject, but I was captured by the intrigue and it compensated for the narration.

More insight into the Girl

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I loved the original three books and happy to report this one despite being written by a different author (sadly due to the death of Larsson) is a great story.

There are a couple of really annoying things however in the music at the start and end is trash and every time there is a phone conversation in the story, it’s sounds like the characters are speaking underwater!

That said, a great story and a credit to the series.

Great continuation of the series.

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Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I tend to listen to books whilst driving and this was good enough to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel. Its as OK book but nothing like as good as the original trilogy though

What could David Lagercrantz and George Goulding - translator have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Developed the characters more - in the way Stig Larson would have done we didnt learn anything new about any of them and some seemed to become two dimensional

What about Saul Reichlin’s performance did you like?

He brings the story to life very well

If this book were a film would you go see it?

possibly but more likely to wait for TV

Any additional comments?

Had this been written as a stand alone book with its own characters it would fit into the OK Crime thrillers category but would be unlikely to be a best seller
Following on from the Stig Larson trilogy it will obviously get a lot more sales and its readable but nothing like as good as the originals.

Not great but not as bad as I feared

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Is there anything you would change about this book?

I hate these Audible guided reviews where they ask the questions. So I'll largely ignore them.

There are issues with this audiobook, but it's difficult to pin down where they stem from: Lagercrantz's narrative, Goulding's translation, Reichlin's voice performance or Larsson's original shortcomings imitated or borrowed for authenticity's sake.

What other book might you compare The Girl in the Spider's Web to, and why?

As the 4th novel in the series, it is inevitable and only right to compare Spider's Web with Larsson's originals. In this respect, I'll say the plot development is faithful and I enjoyed it. It's very similar to Larsson's style and this includes the weaknesses. For example, we get a lot of detail about short-term 'nothing characters' - the best example of which are the cops who get sent to the main victim's house. We get their background, relationship details, character traits - and for what? Nothing. They play no further part in the story and this is at the expense of main character development; the people we yearn to know more about.

Would you be willing to try another one of Saul Reichlin’s performances?

The narration was weird. Not poor, but just really odd. I don't doubt his credentials and his prowess for the harsh Swedish pronunciations but the dialogue was fairly stilted and unnatural. It might have been necessary because Lagercrantz's often clumsy prose (or Goudling's translation), but I found the audio-mimicking of the telephone calls very distracting at first. This might have also been because Reichlin found it difficult to create original voices for the vast array of characters.

Was The Girl in the Spider's Web worth the listening time?

I also bumped the speed up to 1.25 for the second half of the book which actually helped with the pacing.

Any additional comments?

Perhaps I should have read the book rather than listening to it.

Good to see Salander and Blomqvist back BUT....

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Much preferred the originals but wanted to see what the new work was like, not sure I would bother with any future offerings

Dissappointing

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