Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

Larsson, Stieg.The Girl Who Played with Fire.Vintage. New York. 2009. digital edition. 671 pages.

Summary: (from Publisher's Weekly)
Fans of intelligent page-turners will be more than satisfied by Larsson's second thriller, even though it falls short of the high standard set by its predecessor, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which introduced crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist and punk hacker savant Lisbeth Salander. A few weeks before Dag Svensson, a freelance journalist, plans to publish a story that exposes important people involved in Sweden's sex trafficking business based on research conducted by his girlfriend, Mia Johansson, a criminologist and gender studies scholar, the couple are shot to death in their Stockholm apartment. Salander, who has a history of violent tendencies, becomes the prime suspect after the police find her fingerprints on the murder weapon. While Blomkvist strives to clear Salander of the crime, some far-fetched twists help ensure her survival. Powerful prose and intriguing lead characters will carry most readers along. (Aug.)

Review:

I really tried to like this book. Really tried my hardest. The beginning was promising - Lisbeth is enjoying her pilfered wealth at a hotel in Grenada. She hasn't spoken to Blomkvist in over a year and no one knows where she is. Meanwhile, in Sweden, Millenium has embarked on a partnership with a man that is about to publish an expose on the sex traffic trade in Sweden. But murders happen and Lisbeth appears to be the killer.

Sounds interesting, right? Murder. Corruption. Sex. Violence. The hunt for the real killer. Should be action packed. Well... It was, but really there were just too many characters and too many things going on in the book. We did learn more about Lisbeth, including why she was declared incompetent as a teen, but the reveal was very anti-climatic.

One major gripe about the book is the number of seemingly indestructible people in this book. Lisbeth in particular is almost comic book superhero: she's rich, violent, has a photographic memory, is an expert hacker, a vigilante, bisexual, and now is a practically professional level boxer. What happens in the end (which I won't give away even though it's glaringly obvious in the summary of book 3) also makes her out to be almost superhuman. I'm waiting for her to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
This book would have been so much better if they cut about 1/3 of it out and reduced the characters by half. and maybe found some better ways to describe the giant with a ponytail.
This book got rave reviews from everyplace I've seen it reviewed, so maybe this is another case of A Reliable Wife where I am wondering if I read a different book than the rest of the blogosphere because I just didn't get the appeal. Rating: 4/10

Review: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Larsson, Stieg. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Knopf Doubleday.ISBN 9780307454546. 2005

Synopsis:
Mikael Blomkvist, a financial reporter, was convicted of libel against a top Swedish industrialist. He is hired by Henrik Vanger to write his family history and investigate the unsolved disappearance/murder of his niece Harriet decades earlier. If he solves the case, Henrik will give Mikael the ammunition he needs for revenge. To do so, he will need the help of Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant anti-social investigator.

Review:
This was a book that I kept picking up, and then putting back down practically every time I was at a bookstore. Something kept drawing me to it, but the plot seemed a bit too complicated to hold my interest. I finally read it because it was my May book club selection, and I am glad I did. This book was captivating and easily one of the best books I've read this year.

I was warned in advance that it takes about 60 pages to get into the book, because of the need to set up the plot. I was hooked from page one. The characters are well fleshed out and wonderfully flawed, the plot is gritty and suspenseful and surprisingly dark. I figured out what happened to Harriet right away, but I didn't care- the book kept me guessing and enthralled throughout the book. The subject matter was particularly graphic and disturbing in the second half of the book, dealing with violence against women, and not for the faint of heart. If I have any complaint about the book, it's the ending. What happens after the mystery is solved just doesn't mesh with what Mikael is portrayed to be. Rating: 9/10

This book was so good that the second book in the trilogy (The Girl who Played with Fire) has jumped up to the top of my to be read list.

The Forgotten Garden

Morton, Kate. The Forgotten Garden: A Novel. New York: Washington Square Press, 2009. 560p ISBN 1416550542. $15.95

A young girl is adopted by a dock master after being abandoned on a ship bound for Australia in 1913. On her twenty-first birthday the same young woman learns she is not who she thoughts she was. Armed with a small suitcase containing a book of fairy tales written by a woman she remembers as The Authoress, Nell leaves her adopted family and embarks on an odyssey to discover her true identity. Upon Nell’s death, her granddaughter Cassandra discovers she has inherited a cottage in Cornwall she never knew existed. Cass sets off to England to finish Nell’s quest and solve the mystery of her family tree.

Morton skillfully weaves the story of three women separated by generations, leaving the reader on the edge of his/her seat trying to solve the mystery of who this four year old girl was that was abandoned on a ship, and why was she left behind. Morton’s novel combines Victorian sensibility, gothic intrigue, fairytales, and romance. For fans of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, there is a cameo by the author and more than a passing similarity to the tale.

At times the plot stumbles with too many extraneous details and unnecessary hints at possible incestuous relationships. The male characters are not as well crafted as the women, and the number of characters can be difficult to keep track of at times. The similarities to The Secret Garden left this reader wanting more originality. Morton’s second novel is an engrossing read that keeps the audience on a merry chase thinking they have discovered the answers but in fact they have not. Rating: 8.5/10