The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: A Lisbeth Salander Novel

THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO PRODUCT (my review of Stieg Larsson's actual story and writing style will come later)For me this was the easiest of the three sets of CD's to rip to Itunes. All of the discs are tagged correctly, which was not the case in the last two audiobooks.Again Simon Vance is the reader and again he makes the book an engaging read. I would not be able to get past all the foreign place names and character names without Vance. Plus he puts the emphasis right where it needs to be in each narrator sentence and each piece of character dialogue. There is just one problem with this particular book in the series that was not a problem with the other books. There are a lot of female characters in Nest. Which is as it should be since one of Larsson's sub themes in the trilogy is an undercurrent of mysogyny in Sweden. When Vance only had to give major character voices to Salander, Salander's girlfriend Mimi, Blomkvist's editor Erika Berger, Blomkvist's sister Angela Ginnini and one female police detective named Merk (?), he did alright. He gave each character her own distinctive voice. This helped me to keep up with each character. But now there are many more female characters who have a big part in the story and Vance's repertoire of female character voices is getting repetitive, which is making it more difficult for me to keep up. I don't blame Vance for this. He is, after all, a man. He does a great job of giving each of the many male characters a distinctive voice. I don't necessarily expect a male actor to have as deep a well of female character voices from which to draw. I think, in the case of this particular book, it would have been a good idea to actually invite a female actress in to voice all the female parts since there are so many of them.THIS IS A REVIEW OF STIEG LARSSON'S STORYI'm impressed that Stieg was able to keep this thriller thrilling even while the heroine spent a good portion of the book confined to a sick bed. I'm also impressed that the many asides about the newspaper business did not detract from the overall story. I liked this book a great deal and found it a fulfilling enough end to the series. I was annoyed by some plot turns Stieg decided to take. The sideplot of Erika Berger having a stalker gave me no insight into her character or the character of her husband or the Swedish newspaper business. The side plot seemed to only serve as a way to introduce the character of Lisa (Liza?) from Milton Security as a kind of rogue ex-cop. Perhaps Stieg intended to use Liza as a continuing character in his decalog but then he dropped dead and the decalog was never completed. But in this particular book the stalker storyline is superfluous. I also thought it was just so wholly unoriginal that the woman for whom Mikael thinks he might fall happens to be an amazon goddess who works out three hours a day and came close to being an olympian. Really Stieg, really? The most gorgeous female character you've introduced in the series is the one who indescribably falls in love with Mikael and with whom Mikael seriously considers going monogamous? When Mikael began a sexual relationship with Harriet Vanger I interpreted it as Stieg showing that Harriet herself was free of her past. The fact that Harriet, a victim of child sexual rape and torture, could have a purely sex-for-pleasure relationship with a man with whom she was not in love and had not built up a history of trust (the way she had with her husband) showed me that Harriet no longer had any inner curses hanging over her head from the things to which her father and brother had subjected her. She was free and this was shown by her freedom to enjoy sex for pleasure without any neurosis. So it was about her and not about Mikael so much. But to have a Constitutional Protection cop with the body of Venus and Serena Williams fall for the admittedly soft Mikael who is also a smoker, well I just couldn't buy it. I'll give Stieg the benefit of the doubt and assume he intended to exploit the relationship for plot purposes in future books in the decalog. That would make sense considering she is a cop who spies on other cops and members of the government who might be suspected of breaking the law. But in this particular story, their relationship annoyed me. What I did like was the very end where the reader could see Lisbeth progressing as a member of society. The pivotal choice she makes at the end of the book, her visit to Paris, her remembering those for whom she needed to buy Christmas gifts, her acceptance of being in debt to others, I really liked these little touches of her budding sense of her own membership in society. I imagine Stieg had hoped to develop Lisbeth's since of that membership and the belonging it confers as the decalog progressed. It's a real shame he was taken from the world of literature at age 50.

Suspenseful, detailed, full of interesting characters, who are rootable and detestable. It will keep you reading, quite possibly all night. Stieg Larrson’s death is a considerable loss to fiction.

I thought it was meant to be the last book of Larsson's trilogy until I read in Paris-Match that there were other books planned, that the Salander-Bloomkvist saga was supposed to be a series. This makes sense when you read the rather open ending. I agree with reviewer E. Jacob that this novel is not the best of the trio, at least not in the beginning, and that it is in need of more vigorous editing. It takes forever to start. The motor roars with no vehicle really moving for the first hundred pages or so. And then, vroom! It's police, personal, political all at once. It's the "24h du Mans" of intrigues, one racing against the other, crashing on occasion. There is an orgy of characters, many of them corrupt or fascist, or crazy. There are the police forces doing what they can, and the government, typically hesitant before deciding to get involved. There are the ambiguous secret services. There is a judiciary system that convicts, but not necessarily out of principle or convinction. There are the heroic journalists, of course. We know that Larsson was one of them and that he was a man of courage fighting extremists and Nazi organizations. And we realize that Larsson the author has the ambition of underlying here the ills of society, including the wrongs still done to women in countries as progressive as Sweden. So kudos to the undertaking. Frankly, things pick up when Salander gets out of the hospital. She has been seriously wounded in The Girl Who Played With Fire as she tried to settle matters with her murderous father and brother. The fact that despite this her father is staying only two doors away from her at the hospital is one of the weaknesses of the novels. I realize Larsson wants tension to continue as Daddy wants his little girl dead, but since I go through no suspension of disbelief here, it doesn't work for me. But as soon as Salander works on her defense and teams up, albeit electronically, with Bloomvist, the story becomes alive again and the book, a joy to read. Nothing is missing: action, suspense, court scenes, and the bittersweet, and stubbornly anti-romantic attitude of the main characters. So anti-romantic in fact that it may be a shield against what they fear more still than all the blows they have already received. For love can be a hell of a bang on the head.

While I admit I didn't read the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- I did see the movie. Then I found The Girl Who Played with Fire lying around our home and dove right in. Such easy reading; didn't want to put it down. And now I'm half-way through The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. It's hard to put it down; it's so captivating and written in the same vein as the others. It's well worth buying. The only disappointment is that it's not as long as the first two so my enjoyment is going to end much sooner. That's OK. Oh and did I mention the book arrived before its scheduled delivery date? That was a major plus. You won't be disappointed if you purchase the last of the Millennium Trilogy from Stieg Larsson.

A great well written and thrilling book. I have read all three Stieg Larssen books.

It is a seamless continuity from the earlier two books of the Dragon Tattoo series. Excellent characterisation, maintaining the earlier tempo. Very gripping and unputdownable.

ORDINE ARRIVATO NEL TEMPO PREVISTO. OTTIME CONDIZIONI. GRAZIE

Although this book has a slower pace and fewer breakthroughs than the other two, the characters interactions and thrilling atmosphere make this so interesting as the previous books.As we face Lisbeth's preparation for reckoning against the Swedish government, we dive into an intelligent story of espionage and deception.Surely a great ending for all the characters journeys and the trilogy itself.