Mikael Blomkvist è tornato vittorioso alla guida di Millennium, pronto a lanciare un numero speciale su un vasto traffico di prostituzione dai paesi dell'Est. L'inchiesta si preannuncia esplosiva: la denuncia riguarda un intero sistema di violenze e soprusi, e non risparmia poliziotti, giudici e politici, perfino esponenti dei servizi segreti. Ma poco prima di andare in stampa, un triplice omicidio fa sospendere la pubblicazione, mentre si scatena una vera e propria caccia all'uomo: l'attenzione di polizia e media nazionali si concentra su Lisbeth Salander, la giovane hacker, "così impeccabilmente competente e al tempo stesso così socialmente irrecuperabile", ora principale sospettata. Blomkvist, incurante di quanto tutti sembrano credere, dà il via a un'indagine per accertare le responsabilità di Lisbeth, "la donna che odia gli uomini che odiano le donne". È lei la vera protagonista di questo nuovo episodio della Millennium Trilogy, un thriller serrato che all'intrigo diabolico unisce un'acuta descrizione della …
Mikael Blomkvist è tornato vittorioso alla guida di Millennium, pronto a lanciare un numero speciale su un vasto traffico di prostituzione dai paesi dell'Est. L'inchiesta si preannuncia esplosiva: la denuncia riguarda un intero sistema di violenze e soprusi, e non risparmia poliziotti, giudici e politici, perfino esponenti dei servizi segreti. Ma poco prima di andare in stampa, un triplice omicidio fa sospendere la pubblicazione, mentre si scatena una vera e propria caccia all'uomo: l'attenzione di polizia e media nazionali si concentra su Lisbeth Salander, la giovane hacker, "così impeccabilmente competente e al tempo stesso così socialmente irrecuperabile", ora principale sospettata. Blomkvist, incurante di quanto tutti sembrano credere, dà il via a un'indagine per accertare le responsabilità di Lisbeth, "la donna che odia gli uomini che odiano le donne". È lei la vera protagonista di questo nuovo episodio della Millennium Trilogy, un thriller serrato che all'intrigo diabolico unisce un'acuta descrizione della società moderna, con le sue contraddizioni e deviazioni, consegnandoci con Lisbeth Salander un personaggio femminile unico, commovente e indimenticabile.
Review of 'The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium, #2)' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Goes back and forth between sugar fiction mystery thriller and delving into soberingly real issues. This one tipped a little more to the thoughtful side for me. The setting names are so detailed, I enhanced the experience a little by following some of it on maps. All the while wondering how Swedes can ever sleep on the amount of coffee they drink...
Review of 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Incredibly suspenseful. Especially this part. While the first book and the beginning of the second were good, once this one gets going there is no stopping until the end of book three.
Review of 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This one played a lot like a long episode of CSI (which I don't enjoy). Also, I'm not the kind of person who cares very much about eloquent sentence structure, but Larsson's awkward phrasing makes me chuckle - to the point that it too oft interrupted the flow of reading.
I did like the book, though. Larsson continues to do a great job with the suspense, action, and character development in this second book from the trilogy. Also, on a personal note: it may just be my horrible memory, but similar to my reaction to the first book, I didn't remember most of the details from the film (even though I loved all of the Swedish-language movies from this trilogy). The third book is in the mail!
Review of 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' on 'Goodreads'
1 star
First The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo did a modern take on the 'Trapped on an island' who-done-it plot; now The Girl Who Played with Fire does a take on the 'It wasn't me, it was the one armed man' plot
Review of 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Wow! This was INCREDIBLE! A phenomenal follow-up to The [b:Girl with the Dragon Tattoo|2429135|The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)|Stieg Larsson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275608878s/2429135.jpg|1708725]. I thought there might be some let down, cause the first good was so good, but Played With Fire might be better! Still the police/mystery thriller is not my favorite genre, but Larsson has created stories that just suck you in from the beginning.
One thing that I'm wary of however... The end of Dragon Tattoo clearly leads into Played With Fire. And the end of Played With Fire is almost like a cliffhanger into The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. Considering that Larsson died while the 4th book was an outline and while he was planning 10 books, I'm afraid there won't be any really ending to the next book.
But that won't stop me from reading it as soon as I get my hands on …
Wow! This was INCREDIBLE! A phenomenal follow-up to The [b:Girl with the Dragon Tattoo|2429135|The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)|Stieg Larsson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275608878s/2429135.jpg|1708725]. I thought there might be some let down, cause the first good was so good, but Played With Fire might be better! Still the police/mystery thriller is not my favorite genre, but Larsson has created stories that just suck you in from the beginning.
One thing that I'm wary of however... The end of Dragon Tattoo clearly leads into Played With Fire. And the end of Played With Fire is almost like a cliffhanger into The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. Considering that Larsson died while the 4th book was an outline and while he was planning 10 books, I'm afraid there won't be any really ending to the next book.
But that won't stop me from reading it as soon as I get my hands on it.
I seem to have been reading quite a lot of these recently. This on is the second of the "Millennium" trilogy, the first being [b:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo|2429135|The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)|Stieg Larsson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275608878s/2429135.jpg|1708725]. The plots include the staff of Millennium magazine, based in Stockholm, Sweden.
Unlike most of the Swedish whodunits I've read, in this one the protagonist is not a boozy middleaged divorced or divorcing police detective with health problems and in trouble with his superiors, but is Lisbeth Salander, a young female computer hacker with antisocial attitudes.
A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional …
Yet another Scandiwegian whodunit!
I seem to have been reading quite a lot of these recently. This on is the second of the "Millennium" trilogy, the first being [b:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo|2429135|The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)|Stieg Larsson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275608878s/2429135.jpg|1708725]. The plots include the staff of Millennium magazine, based in Stockholm, Sweden.
Unlike most of the Swedish whodunits I've read, in this one the protagonist is not a boozy middleaged divorced or divorcing police detective with health problems and in trouble with his superiors, but is Lisbeth Salander, a young female computer hacker with antisocial attitudes.
A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers.
Jarret linked to a site, The Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test, and I had a look at it and started doing the test for my own fictional characters. They seemed very remote from being Mary Sues, and hardly any of the criteria applied to them even slightly. Perhaps that's because I've always believed what G.K. Chesterton said about fairy tales -- fairy tales are not about extraordinary people, but about extraordinary thing happening to ordinary people.
But the further I went into the test, the more it seemed to apply to Lisbeth Salander. Could she be a Mary Sue?
I have to admit that for the first 100 pages or so I was tempted to abandon the book, mainly because my wife had just finished one that I wanted to read more. But I stuck with it, and the pace picked up, especially after page 200 or so (there are 569 pages) and in the end I would say that it was a good read, though I still have mo reservations and some of the other characters.
Perhaps some of the flaws in the book can be attributed to the fact that all three books in the trilogy are being published posthumously, and so are in a semi-raw state. A good fiction editor might have pointed out some of the flaws in the characters, for the author to revise. But with the author being dead, no one really can revise them any more.
