The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Blast it all, Larsson made me eat my words — many of them, anyway — about his ability to write a decent thriller with his third Millennium book. If anyone else had written this, I’d probably have given it 2.5-3 stars, but in comparison to his first two books, this one looks sooo much better.
A lot of the weaknesses of the first two books are still present–the persistent eye for irrelevant, and momentum slowing detail; an overabundance of characters; plotlines that do little-to-nothing to serve the main plotlines; stock characters abound; etc., etc.
But we see some real growth in Lisbeth, some potential growth in Blomquist, and a courtroom scene at the end that makes one wonder if there’s another female character that’s supposed to be the real hero of this set. In my book, that scene covers a multitude of crimes against fiction that Larsson committed.
Am I glad I slogged through the series? Not really. But having made it through the first book, and suffered through the second, I really enjoyed this one.
But man, am I so glad there’s not a #4
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