The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy

I have recently read “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy. I must admit I am sad that Steig Larsson will not be writing anymore books, as I thoroughly enjoyed these three books. (There is a note in the front of each book that Steig Larsson died of a Heart Attack shortly after dropping off the completed manuscripts for all three books to the publisher). All three books are VERY good and I would highly recommend them to anyone who enjoys a good Crime Thriller.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” introduces you to the two main characters, Mikael Blomkvist, and Lisbeth Salander, as well as the many supporting characters that join these two through the 3 books. Mikael Blomkvist is definitely the more central character, but Lisbeth plays a very important role. I couldn’t put “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” down. It has been a long time since I’ve read a book that was so entertaining that I JUST HAD to know what happened next. (All I can say is work really got in the way ;oD) The characters are well developed and in my case I actually cared about what happened to them. I also wanted to know more about them and how they came to be as they are at this point. The book also contains an adventure element. The part where you know something is going to happen, you aren’t quite sure what, but you’re going to read well past your bedtime to find out. If you consider that this book was first written in Swedish and then translated to English, it flows exceptionally well and at no point did I find myself thinking “translation error!” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” has a villain character and I was pleased that I wasn’t able to figure out who that was until the lead characters did. I was also pleased that I wasn’t able to predict the ending (man, I hate when that happens). The plot line moved really well and at no point did I find myself “bored”… I have this tendency to skim wordy paragraphs that are mainly for description sake, and I didn’t do that in this book. As soon as I finished this book, I was ready to start the next one “The Girl Who Played with Fire”. I finished this book in a week’s time, but that’s because I had to work. :o)

“The Girl Who Played with Fire” was equally as good as “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and just as hard to put down. I think it took me all of 3 or 4 days to read this book. When you pick up this book a substantial period of time has taken place between the end of the last book and the start of this book, but Mr. Larsson does a good job summarizing that period of time and you don’t feel like you missed anything important. This book started out running and never slowed down. There is a lot of character history in this book which helps fill in some of those blanks that are left by “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Mikael Blomkvist is still one of the main characters in this book, but Lisbeth Salander holds a greater spotlight, which is fine because at points she is by far the more intriguing character of the two. She has qualities that make you want to know more about her, and her history. You want to know her story. There are new characters in this book that weren’t in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and they definitely help the story along. At no point was there a character that I felt like was a filler and needed to just go away. There were however characters that I couldn’t stand and had strong opinions of. There were some moments where I was concerned for the characters and/or rooting for them to succeed. This book also has some villains and Mr. Larsson did a really good job of making them unlikeable. Just as with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, the ending was not predictable. This book ends dramatically and makes you want to know what is going to happen now, which means I couldn’t WAIT to pick up “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”.

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” is the Finale to the trilogy. This book picks up where “The Girl Who Played with Fire” ended; there are no long periods of time between the two. Honestly, I had a hard time getting into this book and it took me much longer to read this one. I believe the main reason for this is because there are new characters introduced in this book and quite a few of the first chapters cover these characters, their background, and their importance in this story. By the end of “The Girl Who Played with Fire” I was attached to Lisbeth Salander and her piece of the story, so I could say I was disappointed she wasn’t as main a character at the start of this book as she had been previously. That’s not to say she isn’t important, because she most definitely is important. This book definitely answers all the questions you had left after reading the first two books. There is a lot of back story and history brought forward in this book that answer a lot of those “How?” questions you find yourself asking throughout the first two books. At no point did I have any idea how this book might even possibly end, Mr. Larsson did a fantastic job of leaving that a mystery until you reached the part where he was ready to tell you. Mikael Blomkvist is still in this book and still plays a pivotal role amongst all the characters. I’m pretty sure the book wouldn’t work quite as well if he didn’t exist. After the first two parts of this book I couldn’t put it down, the back story ended, and the adventure began. It’s the adventure that pulls me in. It took me two days to finish the final 300 pages, it took me a lot longer than that to get to that point. But, back story does that sometimes. (I didn’t do any skimming though, so that’s a good sign). This is definitely a classic trilogy, in that it doesn’t leave any loose ends that could possibly lead to more books. This book does a great job of wrapping it all up for the reader and even tying a bow around it as if to say “all finished”.

The person who loaned me these books stated “Book 1 you learn about Mikael, Book 2 you learn about Lisbeth, Book 3 answers all your leftover questions.” After reading them, I would say that is a very accurate summarization of them. I have watched the “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” movies, both the Swedish version and the American version. Both were good, but they both changed the story some, which bugs me. It doesn’t bother me if you take out some less important pieces of the story due to lack of time, but it does bother me when you CHANGE the storyline. Both movies changed how the ending happens, it still happens, but not at all how it’s written. So, my recommendation (as always) would be to read the books first, than see the movies. If nothing else, you’ll be better informed of the “extra” how that happened bits that are almost always missing from movies.

Well, time to move onto the next book… I will probably review it soon as I’m almost done with it.

Until Next Time~

Sam