The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets's Nest

Luftslottet som sprängdes by Stieg Larsson


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
[Out in the U.S. next summer, acquired now because I have my vays.:]

More weirdly compelling Swedish reporter/hacker mystery adventures, this time with extra government conspiracy. If you don't know about this series yet, for God's sake don't start here. Because when I bitched that the last book had no denouement at all, it turns out that's because there's actually 600 pages of more plot instead.

This book shouldn't really work, but mostly does. It has this slow, grinding pace, full of starts and stops, which is totally appropriate for the tedious and convoluted investigations that surround Salander in the hospital and then in jail. But this routine with swaths of meetings and new characters and endless back-and-forth is great reality pacing, but bad book pacing. And yet, things really do happen, and the book is emotionally satisfying, and I can cut it a lot of slack for probably not being as thoroughly edited before the author's death as he would have liked.

And really, if this is the last of the series we get, it's not a bad place to stop. I mean, all told, we have three books of convoluted plotting with a cast of vivid characters whose assorted traumas and polyamorous* relationships ring really true to me. And these books are not violent against women in ways that make it difficult for me to pick up other random mysteries now, because the comparison is just too awful.

*Apparently Word knows "polyandrous," but not "polyamorous." Eh?

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