The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

In spite of an increasingly busy schedule, I got through Stieg Larsson's final installment of his Millenium trilogy (and the last book he ever wrote ever) in just about a week.

For those who've been waiting for the paperback edition: it comes out next month.

We pick up right where the last book left off, with Lisbeth Salander and her father hospitalized, and Ron Niedermann, the seemingly invincible giant, on the run from the cops. Salander's off the hook from the murders she was originally suspected of, but faces a plethora of criminal charges, including the attempted murder of her father. She accepts Mikael Blomkvist's sister, Annika Giannini, as her lawyer, and prepares for trial while in the hospital. Meanwhile, Blomkvist works together with Lisbeth's old boss, Armansky, to investigate what he dubs "the Zalachenko Club"--the group of men within the Secret Police who aided and abetted Zalachenko's crimes that went unpunished. They enlist the help of a division within the Secret Police after a time. Meanwhile, the remaining members of the Zalachenko Club plot to rid themselves of Salander and Blomkvist forever--and preserving their abhorrent secrets.

Since Hornet's Nest picks up from the second book, there's no need for a plot setup, and the story gets going right away. While most of the plot occurs within a hospital during the first and second parts, there's no shortage of intrigue taking place within and outside of the complex. The plot also moves breathlessly by, with sharp twists and turns throughout. It moves so fast you hardly know it's already the climax (which, by the way, is a little disappointing for fans of the last book's violent climax). My biggest issues with this final book lie in the ending--everything resolves itself much too quickly. For example, Niedermann disappears entirely in the second half of the book, only to finally turn up again in the epilogue and be defeated by Salander--all in the space of less than 20 pages. And maybe it's because I'm not sure what the differences between Swedish and American criminal law are, but I thought she was acquitted of all charges much too soon--she was released practically the same day.

The best part of this book was the immense focus on Salander--Larsson has finally conceded that she's the real star of the series. Unlike Blomkvist, she does grow and change as a result of her experiences: begrudgingly more accepting of authority (though not by much), a gradual (slight) rejection of violence as a means of solving problems, and a realization that there are people whom she in fact does care about.

Now that the series is over, I'd have to say the best part of the trilogy overall was Lisbeth Salander herself--she's a heroine unlike any other that's been seen before in the mystery/thriller genre that I know of--ruthless, righteous, and asocial. She's also the character that fully develops over the three books--most of the rest remain the same as always--and her strangeness invites us to root for her, even though she has brutally punished the men who have ruined her. In the end, she moves past these more vicious tendencies and moves on with her life.

Nevertheless, I think this may have been my favorite of the trilogy. I give it the same rating as the second: 4 out of 5 stars.

The Girl Who Played with Fire

First Catching Fire (The Hunger Games' second installment), now The Girl Who Played with Fire. There's something about Fire that makes it a great thematic element for a sequel, apparently.

We meet bad-girl Salander and the intrepid Blomkvist about a year after the first book ended; Salander has been traveling the world, spending the billions she stole from Wennerstrom, and Blomkvist has been enjoying his newfound fame. Shortly after Salander returns, and after Blomkvist has signed on to publish an expose about the sex trade in Sweden, its author and his wife are killed unexpectedly--and quite brutally mangled. Salander's prints are found on the weapon, which belonged to her former guardian (also found dead), so she becomes the prime suspect in the police investigation. Blomkvist of course launches his own investigation, as well as her former boss Armansky. What seemed like an open-and-shut case turns into an increasingly tangled web of intrigue involving the secret police and a motorcycle gang.

There actually isn't much to say about Stieg Larsson's sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that doesn't also apply to the first--especially not without giving a lot of the plot away. In many ways it's more exciting than the original. People are actually murdered and tortured in this one, and our protagonist narrowly escapes with her life in the climatic ending. It's also funnier--the police investigation and media blitz, involving people who know nothing about Salander, are at times farcical--they sometimes come to crazy conclusions, and the whole "lesbian satanist cult" thing is often brought up until things get serious. You will get angry at this book several times--not only because of the gross misperceptions of Salander as a cold-blooded psychopath (she's a righteous cold-blooded psychopath) and the horrible violence committed against her and her allies, but also because the immense number of jerks and assholes in this crop. 

It also moves a hella lot more quickly--whereas in Dragon Tattoo it took 300 pages before it became sustainably interesting (rather than a brief burst of excitement for like 5 pages followed by over 50 pages of boring), it took less than 200 in Fire. As expected, we learn a lot more about Lisbeth Salander's past, including "all the Evil" that remains as a gap in her record. With every new revelation there's a new twist, as both Blomkvist and Salander try to solve the murders separately, and with little help from one another. When it ends, with no denouement, there are still questions to be answered. In a lot of ways, this sequel was like a lot of other second-chapters in trilogies: it gets to the action more quickly since we don't need to be introduced to the main characters, we learn some new revelations about the most mysterious character, and we go down a rabbit hole of intrigue that unearths more mysteries than it solves. There's a big burst of action towards the very end, leaving little to no room for a resolution, hanging on a cliff. If you read and watch a lot of trilogies (as I have), they tend to contain these peculiarities of structure that differ from a one-shot. Some movie trilogies make a lame attempt at a resolution, but there's still something left unresolved at the end.

That said, The Girl Who Played with Fire does some things right that many sequels get wrong. The characters are consistent (Salander is still her lovably ruthless self, Blomkvist still insufferably diligent and brown-nosy), there's nothing that comes up that directly contradicts something that happened in the first book (and I HATE that), and while Salander's survival at the end is highly improbable (probably impossible), most of the escalating action isn't. I daresay it's an improvement to the original: more exciting, more Salander, less romance, more mystery. I got through this in much less time, too: while Dragon Tattoo took me 3 weeks, Fire took only 10 days. 4 out of 5 stars.

Now, on to the final installment!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Or, as the Swedish title translates, Men Who Hate Women.

I'm a latecomer to this one, as the English translation to this Swedish thriller came out like three years ago. But I've never been big on mystery and crime fiction--the likes of Grisham, Patterson, and JD Robb don't interest me at all. So, although Dragon Tattoo was a bestseller, the fact that it was crime fiction in fact turned me off a little. There are two fiction genres that I can't really get into, for many reasons: romance and mystery/crime. I like a good romance, and I like a good thriller, but if they take place in the so-called "real world," with all their formulas and conventions, I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. I like Law and Order as much as the next person, but READING that shit is so BORING!

I changed my mind about Dragon Tattoo when I first saw the trailer for David Fincher's adaptation. Suffice to say, it looked really cool. So I decided to read the book.

And, well, I liked it, but it certainly didn't get me as obsessed as Harry Potter or even the Hunger Games, which was 100 times more violent than this adult novel. Though the violence depicted is no less horrifying.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, for those of you who don't already know, follows the story of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist shortly after his conviction of libel. Wanting to get back at the man who slammed him with the suit and restore his reputation, he agrees to work for the wealthy retired businessman Henrik Vanger, writing a family chronicle and searching for new evidence regarding Harriet Vanger's disappearance, if any can be found. While he thinks this is a cold case, he does stumble upon new evidence, leading him to ever-more dangerous territory, and he eventually enlists the help of Lisbeth Salander, a rebellious idiot savant of sorts, an expert hacker and possessor of great intelligence, even if her social skills are lacking. Though Blomkvist is the ostensible protagonist, Salander is the real star, with her distinctive look, smarts, and mysterious past. She's the one with real secrets, which we learn precious little of in the first installment of the trilogy, and the real reason why anyone has bothered to read the next two--her story is the one left unfinished at the end.

The story is easy enough to follow, and the language dryly straightforward--almost excruciatingly so; Larsson often goes through the mundane details of a character's day with bland precision, summarizing unimportant events in whole pages, and getting vague when it comes to a foreshadowy event--for example, deliberately withholding the identity of a particular place or target until the end. The only bits remotely confusing were the strange ubiquitousness of certain British-sounding terms (such as "blanched" and "draughty") and the consistent use of characters' last names to identify them (which, as an American used to identifying characters by first name, was tough to get used to). While Blomkvist and Salander don't meet until Chapter 18, there are plenty of developments that perk up the story as it chugs along those first 300 pages. I was certainly intrigued and entertaining enough to finish and even pick up the next book.

However, I had a few problems with Dragon Tattoo. For one, it took a while to get to the meat of the story (see mention of painfully detailed unimportant events above). And for another, the sexual exploits of the characters, including Blomkvist and Salander's affair, kind of grossed me out. Of course I anticipated sex, even violent sex (as the books focus on violence against women--though of course this sex is shown as abhorrent), to be depicted in an adult novel, I was weirded out by the fact that Salander and Blomkvist in particular viewed just about everyone of the opposite sex as a potential sex partner, regardless of age. While this may be because Swedish culture and European culture in general is more liberal about sex than the States, I just don't get the thinking about sex so much. I also am weirded out by relationships that feature a big age difference (like Salander and Blomkvist's), and their relationship started out randomly--almost arbitrarily. I also take offense to the assumption that any two characters of the opposite sex who work together will ultimately sleep together (which seems to be the case in Dragon Tattoo) regardless of whether they would even be attracted to each other in real life. The resulting breakup of Salander and Blomkvist didn't move me at all, since I didn't see them staying together anyway. Most importantly, I didn't read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for a love story. I wanted thrills, not sexual tension. Thankfully, it didn't overshadow the real story (though I'm not so sure about the final book, when most of these romances resolve).

On the other hand, like many good mysteries, I didn't see the ending coming--though I did suspect that Harriet was in fact alive somewhere. The climatic chapters were the ones in which I just couldn't put the book down, and the bad guys are sort-of beaten--though perhaps not in the ideal way. And of course, a few live to see another day--and bring our heroes grief in the next two volumes, for sure. While I don't give a shit about the romantic subplots, I'm interested in what the next two books have in store for Blomkvist and Salander--and what Salander's past looked like. Three out of five stars.