Sunday, August 30, 2009

Book Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire

Stieg Larsson really captivated the whole world with his first novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It wasn’t because Larsson had sadly died and people were curious. It was because the book really was fantastic. So good, in fact, it was nominated for three Anthony Awards. (Yes I shall plug those whenever I can. Even if the context doesn’t call for it.)

So this book had a lot of pressure on it. This is the second of three completed manuscripts Larsson turned in before dying and everyone was wondering if it was to live up to the first one. To sum it up, it did. In this entry we really dive deeper into who Salander really is. In Dragon Tattoo, Salander was a computer genius and a very anti-social woman. She teamed up with journalist named Mikael Blomkvist to solve an old crime. Now she is the major suspect in two murders at Blomkvist’s newspaper. Blomkvist is the only one who believes she’s innocent and what follows is a search for her and the truth.

The writing in this book is so articulate and powerful that it’s impossible to tell that this was translated from Swedish. Although the book could probably be trimmed a little bit, I’m such a fan of the writing I didn’t really mind. What really excels in this entry is the character study of Salander. So much so that the actual mystery pales in comparison. It didn’t seem to have the powerful themes the last book gave, but this was still a very excellent entry. I’m anticipating the final entry but it’s going to be depressing to read because I could read about these characters for many more years.


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