I think this book was a case of Stieg Larsson didn't finish editing before he mysteriously died and the publisher decided that instead of finishing the editing job, he'd just let it go. Mistake. I flew through the first two books in this series and then got to this one last December and it was snore city. I'm not kidding you. I slogged through the first 200 pages wondering "WTF?!" It was boring. Salander's in the hospital doing almost nothing, then there's this subplot of Berger getting a new job and "The Section" is trying to cover their arses and it just went on and on. Who cares! Some of it was interesting, but for the most part, I would read 20 pages and fall asleep. It didn't keep my interest like the other books.
The book does pick up speed after Salander's trial when she goes hunting for her half-brother and finds him in that creepy old factory. I won't go into it more, but the beginning of this book is a goose egg and the end is good. So, maybe just read the end. However, the thing that I hate about the series is that there are many loose ends that they don't really tie up. Remember all of that stuff at the beginning of The Girl Who Played with Fire where Salander is in the Caribbean (or is it the Bahamas). What happened to that storyline? Or at the end of this book they opened up this can of worms that is Salander's twin sister and it appears that we will never know the ending of that one. Who is Camilla and what's this bad blood she has with her twin?
So, I really hope that they end up being able to ghostwrite the rest of the books that were meant to be in this series. And I hope they tie up the loose ends. And I hope they stop Larsson's annoying habit of making the first 100 pages of all of his books be about things that are not actually related to the story.
On a side note, have you seen the trailers for the Hollywood movie version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Because the trailers look awesome. Let's hope the rest of the movie is awesome.
4 comments:
I totally agree with your assessment, but I kind of enjoyed the time when she was in the hospital and had to do all that stuff on just a palm pilot or whatever. But like you said, my biggest qualm was that the stuff with the Caribbean was such a HUGE part of the second book (it was the second one right) and then it was totally dropped in the 3rd, as well as the sister. I think he planned to have a huge series of books so I guess it makes sense, but it is still annoying. My guess is that Camila is going to be kind of an evil twin and that at some point her and Lisabeth would have some epic battle.
I was thinking that Camila would be in some kind of danger and Lisbeth had to save her. I guess I'm more of a glass half full kind of gal.
I guess I could see it go either way. On the one hand we know that Camila really loved their dad - right? So I was thinking that maybe she kind of went to the dark side with him. But then they also made it seemed like she kind of did the whole "normal" life, so maybe she was kind of neutral, in which case it would make sense for her to get in some kind of a snafu and Lisabeth to save her despite the fact that she kind of threw her under the bus earlier in life.
I realized I never rated the book. Horrors. 3/5 or 5/10 stars. I'm punishing the editors for their lack of editing.
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