Review: “The Sea Eagle’s Scream”, Karin Smirnoff’s continuation of the Millenium books

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In parallel, Lisbeth Salander is traveling to the same place. She is summoned because she is the only relative of thirteen-year-old Svala, whose mother has disappeared. Svala is the daughter of Salander’s half-brother Robert Niedermann, a completely evil man whom Salander once killed. The swallow itself is almost a supernatural figure. She is brilliant with numbers, she has psychic abilities through her Sami maternal roots and an innate insensitivity to physical pain which means she is easily injured.

Taking the baton

“The Scream of Sea Eagles” is the seventh book in the Millennium trilogy about Lisbeth Salander. The first three were written by series creator, the late Stieg Larsson, and have sold 100 million copies worldwide. The next three were written by David Lagercrantz, who partly built on Larsson’s success. His trilogy has been pretty decent so far, with a rather chaotic beginning in which Lagercrantz seemed to be writing himself better and better. The last book, “Hun som må dø” (2019), closed with a fantastic James Bond scene, where Lagercrantz managed to gather the ranks of what would later become a sextet.

Now Karin Smirnoff is taking the baton. She is known in Sweden for the critically acclaimed trilogy about Jana Kippo by Västerbotten. It’s not really a crime, rather a pitch-black white thrash-like series about violence, incest, alcoholism, written with a hopping and obvious comprehension that glorifies the rawness and creates a certain dark humor.

His best book of the Millennium

Erkefiender

This is also the case with this book, which has a haunting prologue. A wicked man, referred to as the Cleaner, feeds the eagles the remains of young girls. These, it seems, are disappearing in droves from Gasskas, mainly from a reception center for asylum seekers. A monstrous man is involved, boneless but with an enormous penis. The real plot is about money. About corrupt politicians, drugs, criminal buyers and shady deals, about natural resources and windmills – and contract killings. It also turns out that Salander’s arch nemesis, club MC Svavelsjö is involved.

Smirnoff is not afraid to introduce a variety of bestial types, gross scenes similar to torture, murder and rape. In addition, we constantly meet new people and gradually get entangled in a rather labyrinthine storyline. Add that it becomes very dangerous for both Svala and Blomkvist’s nephew Lukas.

There is nothing wilder!

A second chance

There are many exciting individual scenes, but everything becomes increasingly disturbing, messy and unclear, and finally approaches parody with a plot that almost disintegrates.

As I close “The Sea Eagle’s Scream” I am honestly unsure of what I have read. At the same time, I have to admit it was pretty fun while it lasted. And maybe it’s like with Lagercrantz, that Smirnoff has to write a book or two. We have to give her another chance.