User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
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Rating: really liked it
(A-) 82% | Very Good
Notes: An entirely different mood, pace and atmosphere than its predecessor, it thrives off the strength of a single character.
Rating: really liked it
I was worried I wouldn't like this one as much as book one but it was still great!
I love how Larsson has no issues writing very misogynistic characters without coming off as misogynistic himself.
Some authors should take note.With that said, while I understand that Salander is a morally grey character, I don't understand why the author felt the need for her to have sex with a 16yo when she's 25...
Rating: really liked it
4.45/5 ⭐
Full review on my Blog: The Dacian She-Wolf 🐺
“Salander was the woman who hated men who hate women.”
Lisbeth Salander will always be my hero and that’s that.I took a pretty long pause between
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and this and I thought it would take me longer to get into the story but boy, this second book of the Millennium series was
on fire.This is not a light read and it is definitely uncomfortable and sick, with some content warning attached to it, but after you get through the first book, you kind of expect this to happen here too and even on a larger and more hideous scale.
And this is, in fact, exactly what you get from
The Girl Who Played with Fire. You could actually say that it is…explosive. (
Read the book and then come back here and laugh at my pun please.)
The
title of the book really makes sense, but only after you collect your jaw off the floor for the second or third time. I have to say that I was wondering how exactly was that going to be related to the action. Well, because I was busy thinking about everything else, I ignored facts that might have been obvious from the beginning and got sucker-punched because it came like a revelation over me.
There is a certain vibration of this book. It is the same kind of humming and buzzing you get after you shake the hell out of a soda can. And when you open it, well, good luck to you. This book was that soda can all right.
Human trafficking is the main
theme here and it is presented as an issue that must be eradicated. Young girls from poor countries are tricked into believing that they will have a better future for them or for their families. They become nothing more than dependent on the monster that took over their lives using pretty words and sweet promises at first.
The book calls out this issue. And the characters fought with a cause against it.
“There are no innocents. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility.”
By the end of this, everything goes to hell and back, almost literally. One or two times I thought I won’t be able to keep up with everything anymore. It went shock after shock, gasp after gasp. Maybe I am too easily impressed, but this is exactly how I felt at the end. It almost felt surreal.
The nice touch here though - as nice as it can be - is the amount of revelatory information about one person’s life, which probably tries to prove a point – don’t judge someone before hearing their story. Our actions are defined by external factors that lashed at our skin back when it was soft and unblemished.
As in the first book, the best thing that could ever happen was Lisbeth Salander. If you thought I loved her before, think again, because this bad bitch just stole my heart.
“Don’t ever fight with Lisbeth Salander. Her attitude towards the rest of the world is that if someone threatens her with a gun, she’ll get a bigger gun.”
The level of badassery Lisbeth exudes in this book is something beyond almost everything I’ve ever encountered. She is a top-level, Mensa-problem-solving-while-drinking-morning-coffee kind of genius and she is inspiring. She is smart, she is strong, she is fierce and she doesn’t give two shits about anything.
And on top of all that, she’s a good person who has been through
a lot.I am quite sure now that she’s some sort of mild goth Wonder Woman – possibly even immortal.
She’s just phenomenal and if I don’t sound like I am in love with her already, spoiler alert, I am. She’s one hell of a character.
I didn’t think I would like this as much as I liked the first book, but I actually did because I felt a certain kind of development in the story and plot and character development, even though both books are structured to have complex plotlines and plot twists and
real characters.
It was definitely brutal. The reality is presented as raw and rough as it gets, and the main theme of it is not on the pleasant side. It is dirty and dark and twisted, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there and true.
I do think that this book was more of a warning sign turned into a masterpiece and I can say a thank you to Mr Larrson for thinking of that and leaving it to us. But it is definitely a read for everyone who wants to have a feel of the ugly underworld.
_________________________________
Also:
1) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
(Book-styled)
Rating: really liked it
The first book was for the most part plot-driven. The 40-year old mystery took a while to unfold, but was interesting when it did. So was Lisbeth, although she wasn't the main focus. Enter, The Girl Who Played With Fire. The story has now turned character-driven with Lisbeth as the protagonist. But instead of having much of a plot of any character revelations about her early on, we read about her buying a new apartment, grocery shopping, and what furniture she picked out at IKEA in *great* detail. Seriously, you could go down to the store and decorate the same way if you wanted, that's the level of description he gave. I was bored out of my mind. This goes on for a staggering 172 pages.
Mystery thriller? Surely you jest! This book wasn't a mystery whatsoever for me. The fact that the police and everyone else working to solve the case chose to ignore it was pitiful.
The turning point didn't happen until page 172, which was about 100 pages too late to hold the interest of any reader who's not a masochist. The quick pace and interest it generates rapidly disappears until 375.Really. It was more bloated than a rotting whale.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was a better book. I wanted to throw this one against the wall a few times.
Rating: really liked it
Stieg Larsson doesn't really do subtle.
If he thinks an issue is important, he will shout it from the rooftops. With a megaphone. But since he is condemning misogyny and violence towards women, I'm ok with that.
"Salander was the woman who hated men who hate women."
This book, much more than its predecessor, focuses on the tiny-but-tough Lisbeth Salander. We learn quite a bit about the fascinating and horrific backstory that led to Salander developing her unique, defensive, prickly personality.
"Don’t ever fight with Lisbeth Salander. Her attitude towards the rest of the world is that if someone threatens her with a gun, she’ll get a bigger gun."
But don't let the focus on Lisbeth fool you -
essentially, this book should have been simply titled Men Who Hate Women, Part II (
Men Who Hate Women was the original title of the first Swedish book, before it was changed to include a more marketable dragon tattoo) as its main theme remains the same as its predecessor's, repeated and restated countless times. And that's why I liked this otherwise far from perfect book.
Yet again, Larsson determinedly exposes the unlikable aspects of society - misogyny and adherence to judgmental standards and gender norms that are ever-present even in the European paradise of Sweden. The surface mystery is just that - a plot device, an excuse to get a new angle on Larsson's favorite topic.
We see the various shades and sides of hatred towards women, especially if they try to get out of the bounds that society neatly places for them. This is reflected first and foremost in the awful treatment that Salander receives, but also in the treatment of Lisbeth's mother, Sonia Bodig, and the helpless and easily ignored by the society victims of sex trafficking.
"When all the media assertions were put together, the police appeared to be hunting for a psychotic lesbian who had joined a cult of Satanists that propagandized for S&M sex and hated society in general and men in particular."
I loved the no-compromise and no-subtlety message that this book delivers on the subjects that are indeed not subtle and should not be compromised on. 
However, I could not help but sigh and eyeroll at Larsson's less-than-perfect prose.
His books could have really benefited from the generous use of editor's red pen. (But I do understand that these books were published posthumously and therefore probably not much was cut out out of respect to the dead author.) My gripes are similar to those of many other readers - the
tediousness of every minute detail, the never-ending parade of
brand names reading like an ad at times, and what feels like
the entire Ikea catalog making a special appearance. This diary-like filler could have been easily cut out, leaving a much shorter and much sharper book. I also giggled at the author's self-insertion and
clear wish-fulfillment in the memorable figure of incorruptible and irresistible journalist Blomkvist. And how can I forget a grating pet-peeve of
not getting a medical condition right: (view spoiler)
[A person who does not feel pain is destined for a rather disabled existence rather than becoming an indestructible superhero. Really. You can Google that (hide spoiler)].
The final grade is
3 stars - full marks for the awesome message of the story, but points taken off for far-from-perfect execution.
"His attitude had always been that if a woman clearly indicated that she did not want anything more to do with him, he would go on his way. Not respecting such a message would in his eyes, show a lack of respect for her."
Rating: really liked it
Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden = The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium, #2), Stieg Larsson The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second novel in the Millennium series by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. It was published posthumously in Swedish in 2006 and in English in January 2009.
The book features many of the characters who appeared in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005), among them the title character, Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant computer hacker and social misfit, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of Millennium magazine.
The novel is formally divided into a prologue followed by four parts:
Part 1 – Irregular Equations.
Part 2 – From Russia with Love.
Part 3 – Absurd Equations.
Part 4 – Terminator Mode.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «دختری با نشان اژدها»، «دختری که با آتش بازی کرد»؛ نویسنده: استیگ لارسن (لارسون)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هفتم ماه جولای سال2014میلادی
عنوان: دختری که با آتش بازی کرد - کتاب دوم؛ نویسنده: استیگ لارسن (لارسون)؛ مترجم: لیلا حاجی بابا؛ تهران، نشرگستر، سال1389؛ در558ص؛ شابک9786005883282؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان سوئد - سده 21م
عنوان: دختری که با آتش بازی کرد - کتاب دوم؛ نویسنده: استیگ لارسن (لارسون)؛ مترجم: ندا نامور کهن؛ تهران، نشر قطره، 1393؛ در 747ص؛ شابک 9786001194610؛
عنوان: دختری با نشان اژدها؛ نویسنده: استیگ لارسن (لارسون)؛ مترجم: آزاده حیدریان؛ تهران، چکاوک، پگاه، 1393؛ در 670ص؛شابک 9789648957402؛
این رمان که پس از انتشار نسخه ی «انگلیسی» آن، در سال 2009میلادی، پرفروشترین کتاب سال در «بریتانیا» شد، شاهکاری هیجانانگیز، پلیسی و برملا کننده ی ناعدالتیهای اجتماعی است؛ «میکائیل بلومکویست»، ناشر مجله ی «میلنیوم»، تصمیم میگیرد، عملیات قاچاق انسان و تجارت جنسی گسترده ای را، برملا کند؛
هشدار: برای خوانشگرانی که میخواهند کتاب را برای نخستین بار بخوانند، لطفا از خوانش ریویو خودداری فرمائید؛یکروز پیش از چاپ گزارش، دو نفر، به طرز وحشیانه ای، به قتل میرسند، و مشخص میشود، که اثر انگشت روی آلت قتاله از آنِ دوست او «لیزبت سالاندر»، هکر نابغه است؛ «بلومکویست» که به بیگناهی «لیزبت سالاندر» باور دارد، به جستجو و پژوهش در اینباره میپردازد؛ در این میان، خود «سالاندر»، وارد یک بازی کشنده ی موش و گربه، میشود، که او را، وادار به رویارویی با گذشته ی تاریکش میکند؛ ...؛
نقل از پیش درآمد: (او در حالیکه به پشت خوابیده بود، با بندهای چرمی، به یک تخت باریک فلزی، بسته شده؛ بند روی قفسه ی سینه ی او، محکم شده بود؛ دستهایش به کناره های تخت، بسته شده بود؛ خیلی وقت پیش، از تلاش برای رهایی، دست کشیده بود؛ بیدار بود، اما چشمانش بسته بودند؛ اگر چشمانش را باز میکرد، خود را در تاریکی مییافت؛ تنها نور موجود، نوار باریکی بود، که از بالای در، نفوذ کرده بود؛ مزه ی بدی در دهانش احساس میکرد، و خیلی دلش میخواست، مسواک بزند؛ به صدای قدمها گوش میداد، که نشانه ی آمدن او بود؛ نمیدانست چقدر دیروقت بود، اما حس میکرد، برای ملاقات با او خیلی دیر شده است؛ با یک لرزه ی ناگهانی در تختش، چشمانش را باز کرد؛ انگار دستگاهی برقی، در ساختمان راه افتاده، و باعث لرزش تختش شده بود؛ بعد از چند لحظه، دیگر مطمئن نبود، که اینها تصورات او بودند، یا واقعیت بود؛ که در ذهنش یک روز دیگر را، علامت زد؛ چهل و سومین روز اسارتش بود؛ بینی او میخارید، او سرش را چرخاند، تا آنرا به بالش بمالاند؛ عرق میریخت؛ هوای اتاق گرم و خفه بود؛ لباس خواب ساده ای بر تن داشت، که زیرش جمع شده بود؛ اگر رانش را حرکت میداد، میتوانست لباس را، با دو انگشتش بگیرد، و یک طرف آن را، دو یا سه سانتیمتر پایین بکشد؛ اما لباس، هنوز زیر گودی کمرش، جمع شده بود؛ تشک ناهموار بود؛ تنهایی، حواس پنج گانه ی او را، آنقدر قوی کرده بود، که در حالت عادی، متوجه آنها نمیشد؛ بندی که با آن بسته شده بود، آن قدر شل بود، که میتوانست حالتش را تغییر دهد، و به بغل بخوابد، اما اصلاً احساس راحتی نمیکرد، چون آنوقت یکی از دستهایش، پشتش میماند، که باعث میشد، بازویش خواب برود.)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 17/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 12/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
In the second of his three volume series (well, at least it was three until Larsson's heirs hired someone to make a fourth from his notes) centered on the remarkable researcher and hacker Lisbeth Salandar and journalist Mikael Blomkvist, Larsson has delivered a totally engrossing page-turner. About to publish a book that reveals many dirty secrets concerning the international sex trade in Sweden, Blomkvist is caught up in a deadly race for the truth when his two authors are murdered and Salandar is accused of the crime. Larsson touches on corruption at all levels in this tale of women used and abused, treated like any other imported illegal product and powerless to protest. From low level johns to misogynist cops, from dark psychologists to supersecret intelligence agencies, many layers of Swedish society come under Larsson’s microscope. It is not a pretty picture.
Stieg Larsson - from famourauthors.org
Salandar, back in Sweden after an extended sabbatical, has grown somewhat from the character in
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but remains hard-core, justifiably paranoid, blessed with almost magical techie powers (maybe a bit too magical), and an impressive command of several forms of combat. She is, as usual, totally victimized and misportrayed by the powers that be, and needs all her savvy to try to right the latest wrongs. Blomkvist is perplexed by Salandar’s unwillingness to communicate with him, but he has had girl-troubles before. He remains what he was in volume 1, a dedicated, moral actor trying to use his skills to make Sweden a better, or at least more honest, place.
Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander - from wikimedia
Blomkvist and Salandar are characters one can care about and the subject matter makes for pretty stark, sometimes cartoonish, delineations between good and evil. Maybe a bit more ambiguity would have worked too. But that is a quibble. This is a fun read, a book you will not want to put down, one that leaves you panting for volume 3.
My reviews of other Larsson books-----The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)
-----The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium #3)
Rating: really liked it
2020 review: Unbelievably good! Beyond doubt one of the best sequels that I have ever read. After the heights of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I didn't think it was humanly possible to maintain or surpass the levels reached by that first book, but Larsson does, and does it with aplomb!
Looking at a GIF from the film above, reminds me that I will never watch any of the movies. This is, and always be a masterpiece book of neo feminist noir crime/thriller fiction for me.
At the start of the book investigative publication Millennium is sniffing out a big story around the sex trade; Lisbeth is overseas; Nils Bjurman is still seething; and lots of people in positions of authority are going to be exposed. One name connects all this, Zala?
Who is Zala?
Like the first book, it often feels like the narrator is voicing over a documentary, and it works just as well. We get insight into some of this realities' back stories in this, which blew my mind, but also seamlessly connected the two books. The trial by media; the unstoppable antagonists; the murder squad; so much of this was pitch perfect, and then there's the spellbindingly captivating storytelling. And the gift that just keeps on giving? ...One of the greatest characters ever put down on paper... Lisbeth Salander.
10 out of 12, back to back Five Star reads for this series.
Rating: really liked it
I am confident that Stieg Larsson has a reason for this, but Lisbeth Salander is not much of a heroine. Let's list her transgressions from The Girl Who Played With Fire (and these will be deliberately out of context):
1. She forces herself on a 16 year old boy in Granada.
2. She kills a man on the beach during a hurricane.
3. She shuts out Blomkvist for a very long time for a perceived slight, giving him no explanation.
4. She fails to take or show the necessary care with her ex-guardian after his stroke.
5. She alienates everyone else who cares about her.
6. She lives off billions that she stole.
7. She invades the apartment of her "guardian" and threatens his life in the middle of the night.
8. She endangers the lives of friends and innocents.
9. She very nearly burned her father to death when she was a teenager.
10. She pulls a gun on the owner of a car rental agency and shuts him in a broom closet to control him.
11. She commits multiple computer violations, including the hacking of government computers.
12. She carries and uses illegal weapons.
13. She is genuinely ultraviolent.
14. She shoots a man in the foot after macing his eyes, and she tasers another in the testicles.
15. She steals a motorcycle.
16. She chops her father's knee and skull with an axe.
17. She is vengeful in a way that makes Edmond Dantès look like a sissy.
Let's face it, Lisbeth is more than a little bit nasty. And taken a step further, it is safe to say that she is not particularly likable. She is cold, calculating, emotionally irrational, mean, detached, abrasive, unapproachable, unfriendly, selfish, mercenary, vengeful, and more than a few other things most of us would classify as unlikable.
Out of context, Lisbeth Salander is the kind of person who most people would be more than happy to see locked up forever. And if all we had to go on were the reports of newspapers and descriptions of trials, we'd all see it as a failure of the "justice system" if she went free.
Yet we cheer for her in the Millenium Trilogy; we can't seem to help ourselves. And therein lies what Stieg Larsson is trying to tell us with his challenging protagonist -- context is everything.
Larsson isn't simply writing a compelling series of thrillers (and I haven't been so locked into a book, as I was with GWPWF, for a very long time). He isn't simply fishing for a film deal. He isn't just sitting down to write a vapid bestseller. I'd even go so far as to say that Stieg Larsson is not a hack. Nowhere near. He is criticizing the very efficacy of what we so proudly call the "rule of law."
Larsson is suggesting that the "rule of law" fails because it has no room for context. It deals in absolutes (unless you're one of the super-rich or super-influential), and it doesn't give a damn whether you perceived a threat before you lit someone on fire; it doesn't care whether the sixteen year old you're having sex with is mature, in love with you and is totally willing; it doesn't care that you stole the car or killed someone to save a life; it doesn't care that you withheld evidence from the police to protect yourself or someone you love; it doesn't care that you hacked into computers for altruistic reasons; it doesn't care that you were bred to ultraviolence through nature and nurture; it doesn't care about you and it doesn't care about context. It just doesn't care, and because it doesn't care Larsson suggests that we should have a healthy disdain for the "rule of law" and recognize its terrible shortcomings because it is the structure we have to live with whether we like it or not.
Yet with all this, The Girl Who Played With Fire is -- most importantly -- a cracking read. It is fast paced, cinematic in its noirishness, full of suspense, has a genuine twist or two (one of which actually took me by surprise), a cast of characters it is almost impossible not to love and hate (as the mood takes you) -- even thought they are all rather static -- and it ends with a cliff hanger of the first order (I am guessing this is a problem for some readers, but I am a fan of the cliff hanger).
What a shame Stieg Larsson passed from us so soon. I could have read his books for the rest of my life.
Rating: really liked it
He had come.
He smelled of aftershave.
She hated the smell of him.
He...observed her for a long time.
She hated his silence.
Then he spoke to her. He had a dark, clear voice that stressed, pedantically, each word.
She hated his voice.
He laid the back of a moist hand on her forehead and ran his fingers along her hairline in a gesture that was probably intended to be friendly.
She hated his touch.
Lisbeth Salander is simply unforgettable.
I read the first book in this trilogy the year it was published in English and I remember the book so vividly that even five years later I transitioned into this book as if I’d just finished reading Dragon last week. Salander is 4’11”, but she walks across the literary landscape with such giant strides it is impossible to ignore her. People who have never read the books or seen the movies have a vague idea of who she is. People who have watched the movies or read the books may eventually forget her name decades from now, but they will not forget her persona; her verve; her courage.
Now before we start feeling all warm and fuzzy about Salander there are few problems with knowing her. If you cross her she might throw a Molotov cocktail through your window. She is unreliable, unrelenting, and if you own a computer she will know everything about you. She is a hacker extraordinaire and even though she is extremely private, almost maniacal about her own personal information, she has no problem hacking into your personal affairs after all YOU should have been more careful with it. Despite her bristly exterior and her tendency to answer questions with a stare or a monosyllabic response you might find yourself attracted to her. She has a lesbian friend Mimmi who tries to explain Salander’s relationship with sex.
”Apart from the fact that you’re not a dyke. You’re probably bisexual. But most of all you’re sexual--you like sex and you don’t care about what gender, You’re an entropic chaos factor.”ENTROPIC CHAOS FACTOR, sounds mathematical and math does play a role in this novel, but my version of what Mimmi meant by that statement is that Salander is a person who will parachute in out of the blue, shag you until your nucleus becomes a comet, and then leave before you’ve had time to light your first coitus joint.
”A root of an equation is a number which substituted
into the equation instead of an unknown converts
the equation into an identity. The root is said to satisfy
the equation. Solving an equation implies finding
all of its roots. An equation that is always satisfied,
no matter the choice of values for its unknowns,
is called an identity.”Salander solves complex math equations for relaxation purposes. Throughout the novel she is pursuing the answer to Fermat’s last theorem. Now in the 1990s Andrew Wiles solved the problem using the world’s most advanced computer programme which sounds like cheating to me. When she does figure out Fermat’s intention it is the only time I can remember Stieg Larsson recording his literary heroine...giggling.
Stieg Larsson is an interesting story. He delivered three novels to his publisher and shortly thereafter died from a heart attack, attributed to walking up seven flights of stairs. This unexpected demise helped launch the books onto the bestseller lists. We are morbid aren’t we. He was an investigative reporter by trade and there was an inquiry into whether foul play was involved. It seems he was just a 50 year old man that fate placed a situation in front of him, an out of service elevator, that provided the proper strain to his heart to kill him. What endears these novels to me, even more, is that he wrote them in the evenings as an escape from regular life. Now, there are issues with these books, the use of name brands over and over. You will tire of hearing Powerbook, IKEA and Billy’s Pan Pizza. If Larsson ate as many Billy’s Pan Pizza as Salander does in the book that might be the doughy rope that squeezed his heart.
Billy's Pan Pizza is YUMMY!!!Click the link to check out the Billy's Pan Pizza television commercial. It is a hoot.
http://youtu.be/LZ9nUvg5yhk
Despite any issues I had with the writing, and sometimes it was clunky, the raw power of the writing and a compelling plot made those issues irrelevant.
Salander gets along just fine with the majority of the population, but she hates men who hate women. She ran into several of those in the first book and one in particular is seared into my memory, Nils Bjurman. He is the lawyer that has been assigned to her competency case. She was declared incompetent by the courts and assigned Bjurman to take care of her affairs. Salander is a confident person sometimes too confident and in book one she underestimates her ability to control a situation with Bjurman. He turns the tables on her and brutally raped her. With a presence of mind that is beyond most of the rest of us she recorded the rape and even as he is doing the most sadistic things to her she is going over and over in her head where she made the mistake and what she was going to do to him if he allowed her to live. Interesting enough she lets him live, but holds the video over his head like the sword of Damocles.
Besides the video she does administer her own form of brutal vengeance, but there is a practicality to her decision not to kill him. The courts would simply assign her another mentor that she doesn’t have control of and of course she would have to weather an investigation into his murder. In this book she makes a similar mistake in her pursuit for the man responsible for inspiring the rage and the violence that swirls around her.
Mikael Blomkvist is back and when his team of writers unearth a white slavery ring he finds himself battling a controversial issue that may impact the highest levels of society. Underage girls are being brought from Russia and forced into prostitution. It would be an easy assumption to make that every member of society would want to eliminate a situation that allows young girls to be exploited against their will. One of the problems is that men in government, in positions of power, enjoy the availability of such young, beautiful girls for their own sexual perversions. Despite the fact that Salander is not talking to Blomkvist, he is baffled as to why, she is drawn into the investigation because of the use of the name of one man... Zalachenko. As she becomes the main focus of the investigation she is forced to go underground, a skill she is particularly adept at, and as the rocket fueled plot comes to a conclusion this reader couldn’t have put this book down even if the building was burning down around my ears because Salander... always... puts out a fire with gasoline.
See these tears so blue
An ageless heart
that can never mend
These tears can never dry
A judgement made
can never bend
See these eyes so green
I can stare for a thousand years
Just be still with me
You wouldn't believe what I've been thru
You've been so long
Well, it's been so long
And I've been putting out fire
with gasoline
putting out fire with gasoline
David Bowie
Rating: really liked it
Very short review due to the glitches on GR.
This is the second book in the trilogy. I loved it and I loved the movie. The book bogs down a little but it's all good.
Lisbeth is back and doing her own thing.
Lisbeth has been away from Mikael for some time. But, they come back together when Lisbeth is accused of killing that jerk rapist of hers.
*****Spoiler*****
Lisbeth looks into a sex trafficking ring that Mikael is involved in and finds out some things about her past she didn't want to know.
Her evil arse father is alive and she has a brother and they need to be taken out.
But this almost gets her killed.
Thank God Mikael was able to find her!
Rating: really liked it
I’ll always consider the Millennium series as a trilogy, this is due to all three original novels being adapted into movies in 2009.
It’s only taken me 10 years to finally read the books!
It’s true that the second volume isn’t as strong as the first, but the character of Lisbeth is so strong and fascinating that it’s hard to not get hooked by her exploits.
The trilogy is so good because this second volume explores her backstory and the reader gets a better sense of what makes her tick.
This part is crucial to enjoying the third outing in the series.
It’s testament to Larsson’s writing that I was instantly drawn into the story way before the main plot of Lisbeth being accused of three murders and subsequently on the run takes shape.
It probably helps that it’s been a decade since I’d watched Noomi Rapace’s portrayal of Lisbeth, it helped to give enough distance for me to really enjoy these novels a fresh.
That’s why I have to give this volume the same rating, as they are a complete set.
Rating: really liked it
Awesome! Incredible! Inspiring! 10 of 10 stars!
Rating: really liked it
A downright masterpiece. The action sequences, the constant tension continually building up to lead to a tremendous ending. Lisbeth freaking Salander, she may actually be one of the best, and most complex characters I've ever had the pleasure of reading about. Introverted, extremely genial, and dangerous if need be, she's the epitome of the formula to the creation of a super-intriguing character.
Like the first book, this was a complete investigation-kind-of-book. But unlike the first one, this has nothing to do with third parties, and everything to do with Lisbeth. It's a more personal book, and it cements the core of this series, which is Lisbeth. There are lots of new information about Lisbeth, and she becomes somewhat less enigmatic as we begin to get a glimpse at the troublesome, dark past.
Sex trafficking, Russian hitman, murders. What else does a book need to be freaking thrilling? Salander in this book becomes obsessed with math, she takes it up as a hobby, and up until the last moments when her life is hanging by a thread, she finds the solution to a mathematical problem. Such a peculiar protagonist, I feel constantly intrigued by her and I always have to expect the unexpected from her.
Up until half of the book, nothing extraordinary really happens, it's just plot building up but there's lots of Salander, so it's interesting and gripping to read. Then, at about halfway into the book everything changes. A police hunt begins. You'll have to guess who the hunted is. And how the hell they ended up into this mess.
Surprisingly, there's less Blomkvist in this than the first book. Although, he's still a prime character to the story, he takes the role of the secondary character rather than the first one, as we saw him in the first book. In the entirety of the book, Blomkvist and Salander hardly ever meet.
So, summing everything up, I'll admit that I liked this better than the first because of the more personal storyline the author followed.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS!!
