Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
465 pages
Buy it @ book depository
A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.
It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.
It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves.
It’s a contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives.
Review: So I have finally got around to reading, well listening to this. Way before the hype, a staff member I work with at the library told me I have to read this book because it's so good! So of course I gave it a go, only to have read about 50 pages and not understood a single thing. I found that the names confused me and it wasn't easy to read so I gave up. So now, I decided to get the Audiobook version to see if it was any better than reading. The first disc was boring and it didn't really make much sense to me but now that I've finished the book I can understand why that was part of the story. And I'm so glad I did get it on Audio because I didn't have to worry too much about name pronunciation. One thing that annoyed me was how characters weren't always called by the first names - Larsson would swap from calling them their first name, then their last name. For example one minute he is calling Henrik Vangar - Henkrik and then later he's called Vangar. It got very confusing because it happened with most of the characters and I feel it's even more confusing because the names are Swedish, I think it would be different if they were common English names. I know that sounds really terrible of me to say but it's the truth! The only character I really liked was Henrik Vangar, I thought he seemed like a cool old dude - I didn't feel anything for the other characters.
There are 17 discs for this Audiobook and the tenth disc didn't
work! So I had to skip about 30 pages of the story, this was so frustrating
because the story was just starting to get interesting. (Just so you're aware
that was the tenth disc, so that's more than halfway when the book JUST starts
to get interesting)
I don't feel
the need to read or listen to the other books, instead I read the plots on
wikipedia and I'm quite satisfied with that. In the end this book was OK.
I don't know why it got so much hype, the mystery was interesting enough but
I've read better mystery novels. Oh and a little side note, the main
character Mikael Blomkvist has too much coffee and too much sex, he
is anybodies! I can totally see why they picked Daniel Craig to play him in the
American version of the movie. I am looking forward to seeing the movie version
so I can compare them.
A huge
warning for people who haven't read this and are thinking of giving it a go -
there is a very graphic scene in it which I didn't think was all that necessary
to the story but it was explained at the beginning that a high amount of women
in Sweden get sexually assaulted so maybe it's common to have that sort of
things in Swedish books...
On the cover: Wow what an awesome tattoo! I thought the story was all about a girl with a tattoo but it was more about an excessive coffee drinking journalist who likes women a little bit too much. Oh and What's that about over 1.5 million copies sold? Don't know why?
What I'm listening on Audio to next: Handle with care by Jodi Picoult
Have you read this and did you continue reading the others?
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