The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
I can’t really do a summary without any spoilers for the previous two books so I’ll just say that this picks up just where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off. And it’s more of the same intense story.
I still think the first one of the three was the best but this one (and the second one) weren’t any slouch either. After finishing this one, I wanted to go right back to the beginning and read all three again. I just loved that this trilogy was just go, go, go. From the first page of the first book to the last page of the last book.
The only complaint I had with this (and the second book) was that if you haven’t just read the previous book (and I hadn’t) you’re going to be a little bit confused. Larsson just has so many characters that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them. It’s not that big of a deal because he does a pretty good job of bringing you up to speed about what happened in the previous books (without if being boring and redundant if you have just finished the previous books.) Also, I found that even though I couldn’t totally remember who was who, it didn’t really matter. As long as I remembered, good cop or bad cop (and even if I didn’t – it became pretty obvious very quickly) I was okay.
I think what sets this book apart from others like it is the fantastic story-telling. Larsson sure knew how to weave a tale. And weave he did. There were so many different things going on that all had to come together in the end and make sense and they did! Just like this others, I couldn’t put this one down but when I had to, I wasn’t completely lost when I was able to get back to it. Sometimes I find books like this with so much going on are hard to follow but that wasn’t the case with this one. I’m just sad that I won’t be able to read more from Larsson.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Read for: R.I.P. IV
Wow! I’ve heard a lot of good about this book, but I still wasn’t expecting it to be quite as good as I found it to be! Also, I obviously didn’t read the summaries of the book because it was not at all what I was expecting. For some reason I thought it was a young adult novel and I had no idea it was going to be a mystery. But I’m so glad it was because I was getting behind with my RIP reading and now I can include this in the challenge!
First a warning – this book is intense and it’s definitely not a young adult novel. I’m not even sure I can summarize with justice without giving too much of the story away, but I’ll try. Harriet Vanger disappeared without a trace 40 years ago. Her uncle has obsessively searched for any clue to her disappearance (what he’s convinced is a murder) ever since that day. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who has just been sued (successfully) for libel. Then there’s Lisbeth Salander, who works for a security agency as a PI, who is initially not connected to the main story but ends up being a major player.
From the moment I started reading this book, I could not put it down. Larsson just jumps right into the story and then never stops. At time the story got a little technical but never to the point of losing the reader. I also really liked the writing. It was straight forward, without a lot of extra stuff thrown in. The only problem I had was that there seemed to be either an editing or a translating issue (or perhaps both.) I know that doesn’t reflect on Larsson, but it always bothers me when there are a lot of typos in a book. I think it was definitely partly a translating problem because there were a few sentences that didn’t even make sense or used words in the wrong context. But that is a minor detail and shouldn’t stop any one from running out and grabbing this book! I’m anxiously awaiting the next one but I’m 68th on the list at the library and there are only 26 copies available so it could be a long wait!
