Sep 1, 2009

The Girl who Played with Fire

This one doesn't even get a cover picture. Will I read the third book in the series? Yes, I will, if only because the second book in almost every trilogy is a boring disaster. I don't even know what was going on with this book. The NYT seemed to like it alright, but I'm going to have to diverge with them once again in matters of art...this was a horrible, plodding mess. A huge percentage of it is dedicated to Lisbeth buying a condo, furnishing it at Ikea, and going grocery shopping. Hurrah, right? When she was tattooing "I am a sadistic pig" onto the stomach of a man who really deserved it in the last book, I was totally saying to myself "Self? Don't you really want to know whether she'd go with the Aspelund or the Malm for her guest room?"

Actually, the best part about this book was that a couple characters had names that I only know from Ikea furniture.

When I finally realized what the main plot was, I couldn't believe it. I'd really hoped all that was just a subplot, and kept waiting for something more interesting to kick in, but about 90 percent of the way through I finally gave up and accepted that the bad guys were that two-dimensional. Gah.

1 comment:

Maya said...

I'm curious to know what could inspire you to read the third book. It doesn't sound promising, and the NYT reviewer was perhaps an unscrupulous novice on the take, or meeting a quota for positive reviews. Oh, dear. I sound a bit cynical.