The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
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Book Reviews of The Girl Who Played with Fire
Book Review: A wild ride
Summary: 5 Stars
It's a tragedy for world literature that Stieg Larsson is dead, and we'll never have more than three books with Lisbeth Salander as the heroine. She's an absolutely fascinating creation. This is the second book in the series, and every bit as riveting as The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo.
In the eyes of Sweden's social services system, Salander is a deeply disturbed person who needs a guardian to supervise her and handle all her affairs. But unbeknownst to the authorities, she's a world-class hacker with a photographic memory, brilliant at chess, wildly rich from an Internet coup - and a vicious fighter. For relaxation, she has sex with men or women, as the spirit moves her, and reads books on spherical astronomy and higher mathematics. All this in a very small package: Salander stands less than five feet tall and weighs 90 pounds.
The plot of this book is too complex and full of twists and shocks to summarize. But to oversimplify, three people are murdered because of a book two of them are writing about sex trafficking, and Salander, by a quirk of circumstantial evidence, becomes the prime suspect.
Salander is in hiding for much of the book, baffling all the cops, well-wishers and thugs looking for her, while doing her own highly irregular detective work.
In her twenty-five years of life, Salander has come in for a lot of sexual abuse. But she also has a genius for pay back. Her unique display of brains and aggression is utterly satisfying.
The characters in this book are wonderfully drawn, the pace breathtaking and the fight scenes terrific. I can't wait to read the third book in the series.
Book Review: Simply marvellous
Summary: 5 Stars
I promised myself after finishing the first novel in the Millennium trilogy that I would not start this, the second book in the series, until the third was available for purchase. I didn't want to have that vague feeling of bereavement that comes when finishing an utterly engrossing book involving characters that have become familiar and for whom, and this probably sounds ridiculous, it is possible to feel an element of affection. The `good guys', at any rate, are people who, were you to meet them in real life, you feel you would like to get to know better. They are intelligent, sympathetic, motivated, for the most part, by a higher moral code than mere financial gain and supremely competent at what they do, which is getting the bad guys! And all of this is still true of the superficially nihilistic Salander.
There are certain structural inconsistencies within this book that might be explained by the author's sudden death and some may find this, shall we say, irritating? I didn't and contented myself with the thought that the plusses so far outweigh the minuses that it would churlish to gripe! Larsson's talent in creating these characters and setting them in high tech yet plausible environments is obvious almost from the first paragraph of the first book and is matched by the skill necessary to provide a structure and narrative drive that produces something that truly can be described as `un-put-downable'! Book lovers everywhere should lament the loss of such a rare talent.
As you can see, when the temptation is so great, promises are sometimes difficult to keep!
Book Review: Great reading
Summary: 5 Stars
A friend told me about these books, apparently they have all been translated into Spanish first, and he had read them. I have to say that I am the type of reader that loves to get LOST in a GOOD book, so that means I can get so carried away I can't stop reading. I started reading this book sometime Saturday morning and finally got to the last page sometime around 4 a.m. Sunday. It is a great read, though I would definately suggest that one reads the Girl with the Dragon tatoo first. This book is good but the first one "the dragon tatoo "is better.
I would definately recommend these books, if you like a good detailed thriller. However to understand the protagonist Sulander alias the Wasp and Blomkzist you REALLY need to know what has happened before.
A lot of the place names and first names are Swedish, so you have to make a rough guess at how they would be pronounced.
These books are thrillers but one should realise that there is an underlying truth within the books about domestic, verbal and psychological and sexual abuse/violence towards women throughout, something which I think is interesting as one gets carried into the book without often realizing that the book has been written to bring awarenees to these issues, and leaves the reader with not just the feeling of having read a good thriller, but also leaves you thinking about the statistics that are mentioned throughout the books chapters.
I will be on the list when the next and final Steig Larsson comes out in English translation... sometime 2010.
Book Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
Summary: 5 Stars
Lisbeth Salander jumped into the thick of the trouble in this trilogy's first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and through her stealth and sharp intelligence was able to help Mikael Blomkvist in solving the Vanger mystery. She was a fresh new crime fiction heroine, but the story ended before we got to know her and her backstory as fully as we wanted to. This second book does a lot to fill in the missing details as its murder mystery features many themes and incidents from Salander's own past, that in order to solve need to be faced by someone who is ambivalent about introspection.
This book is about a Blomkvist, Salander, and a new cast of police detectives trying to solve a triple homicide for which Salander is the prime suspect. Because of this, there is a greater immediacy in the story; we are involved in it much more than in the first book because there is no distance between the crime and these characters who we have grown close to. The investigation is evenly plotted out, and there is hardly a boring page in the entire thing. Like the first book, sexual depravity is a big theme here, but is restrained enough not to continually wallow in the disturbing details. Characterization is at a minimum, but that is excusable in a story of such quick momentum. The ending, leaving the story still wide open, brings closure to the reader but not the characters, who still do not know near as much, and leaves you eagerly waiting for the sequel. The trilogy continues to be high-quality and far above most other books in its genre.
Book Review: Riveting and wonderful.
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought the first book - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - a year or so ago.
I had a hard time getting into it. Took me three or four times till I could deal with the Swedish names and locations.
But once I read 50 pages, I was hooked. Salander is a fantastic character. Strange and wonderful - you wonder if they could make this into a movie and not screw it up.
The Swedishness of the locations and characters is both a blessing and a curse - it's not commercial fiction in the sense of anything I've read before (and I read a LOT of it). But it's an incredibly fast paced, lucid, arresting thriller. Sometimes I found it hard to follow - but I couldn't put it down.
Anyway.
I JUST got the sequel and plunged into it without any of the "getting into it" problems of the first book. Like a lot of Knopf publications, it's serious even though it's commercial. It's a great book with fascinating characters and quite unlike the stuff you pick up at airports.
I don't believe in giving away any of the plot - if you like Michael Connelly or Daniel Silva or Scott Turow or even John Grisham, you'll like this...though I think it asks more of you, more concentration, more commitment.
I would read them in sequence - but you'll be done in a week. And there is a third book still out there in translationland - I can't believe this poor guy died.
These are fantastic characters.
I want more.