Happy Reading

Toni's bookshelf: read

The Godfather of Kathmandu (Sonchai Jitpleecheep, #4)
Ape House
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Operation Napoleon
Walking Dead
The Sentimentalists
The Heretic Queen
The Midnight House
Cross Fire
Peony in Love
Absurdistan
Nefertiti
Finding Nouf: A Novel
City of Veils: A Novel
First Daughter
A Place of Hiding
Amagansett
Peter Pan


Toni Osborne's favorite books »
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Tuesday, September 8, 2020

"The Girl Who Lived twice", by David Lagercrantz




                                                                Millennium book # 6

We have two stories to follow in this last installment: one involves the death of a beggar who had previously accosted Mikael Blomkvist, the editor of the journal Millennium and in the second we find out the reasons why Lisbeth Salander has somewhat disappeared from Mikael’s life and as created a cat and mouse game in which he is used as fair game.

Most of the narrative follows Mikael Blomkvist. The book opens with Mikael so tired and fed up trying to finish an article about a Russian oligarch when he gets a call telling him that his phone number was found in the pocket of a dead beggar in the wooded area. He turned up to be a Nepalese Sherpa... Then the novel meanders quite a bit with Salander appearing from time to time to mainly help Mikael with technical support as he goes about with his interviews.....eventually the story reveals unexpected connections and is more captivating...

While in the secondary plot we have Camilla, the evil twin sister, with her GRU cohorts tracking down Lisbeth in order to exact revenge. No worries about seeing blood and gore apart rolling political opponents into cremation oven alive there is not much other howling going on...of course...till the final confrontation....”When two bitches fight, only one will survive”.

This story leaves me hot and cold, at time captivating and at time dragging way too much. All of this drama unfolds with prose that is somewhat stilted and with plots that make little sense. This story is needlessly complex bogging down in a sea of names. Too often I had to pause and reread in order to place the character or go to the detailed list at the beginning to make sense of what’s going on. . Furthermore and as a side note, I think the ability of both the protagonists to take a hell of a kicking and somehow survive another day is a heck of a stretch.....What more can I say....

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