Rating: WARTY!
This is purportedly a continuation of the Millennium trilogy written by Stieg Larsson, but it contains none of Larsson's material which is being held in contention between Larsson's surviving girlfriend of longstanding and his family. This "authorized" version (that is authorized by everyone but Larsson who is dead, and his girlfriend who has possession of his material) was written independently by David Lagercrantz. Once again the title has been changed from the Swedish original, which was Det som inte dödar oss or, That which does not kill us.
The volume runs to some 400 pages, but is so full of fluff and padding that, had the extraneous detail been removed, I would have read the whole thing. As it was, I read only half of it before I gave up out of boredom and disgust. If I had to read the word 'gatan' one more time in any form, I would have honestly puked. I seriously do not need to know every detail of a city in which the characters live and move, and have their being. Indeed, I don't need to know any details of it unless the details are somehow important to the story. A bit of filler I don't mind, but what amounts to paragraphs of it stuffed between the actual interesting bits is just annoying and pretentious. And there really were not any interesting bits here.
The front cover tells us this is "A Lisbeth Salander Novel" but in those two hundred pages I read - the entire first half of the novel - she barely put in an appearance, was absent for most of the early chapters, and hardly even garnered a mention for that matter, let alone actually showed up. How a novel can be deemed to be about a specific character when she not only fails to appear for more than fifty percent of it, but isn't even a topic worth bringing up, is a bigger and more intriguing mystery than the one the novel itself is supposed to relate.
The first nine chapters don't even get us beyond the first day. I know this because the author tediously labeled every chapter November 20th. I care. Any author worth their salt would have made this clear from the writing instead of having to use it as a chapter heading. Hell, put it in 'Part 1' (or part 'November 20') if you have to be that pedantic. Quit hitting me over the head with it every few pages. If I wanted to get 'being hit over the head lessons', I'd contact Terry Jones....
In short, I can't recommend this at all. If you insist on reading it for yourself, I'd suggest you skip the first 120 pages, because literally nothing worth reading about happens before then. Not much happens afterwards, but at least something distantly resembling a thriller begins around there. Unfortunately by that time, I'd lost all interest in pursuing this. I simply didn't care and had no faith whatsoever that this author could replicate what Larsson did without actually cloning what Larsson did. This novel seemed to be every bit as much of a brand new episode in the Millennium universe as the execrable The Force Awakens was a "new" episode in the Star Wars universe.
I saw the movie based on this novel - based on, but barely resembling it. If I had thought it followed the novel I would never have gone to see it, but from preview, it looked like it might be worth watching and I was curious to see how Claire Foy did. She did the best she could with the lousy material, I guess, but the movie castrated Salander and rendered her, as one reviewer put it, into a Goth James Bond. I wouldn't have been that kind. It wasn't a Lisbeth Salander movie in any meaningful sense.
I have to admit I lost some respect for Foy in that she actually chose to do this movie. It was far too Hollywood-ized and neither she nor the writers understand Salander at all. Consequently, it had none of her soul and was essentially nothing more than an attempt at a purse snatch (your purse) by the surviving family of Stieg Larsson in my opinion. In truth it's an insult to Larsson and to his memory as was the novel. I actively dis-recommend both.
