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Just as Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" is held up as the trilogy to which all fantasy trilogies are inevitably compared, I've little doubt that Larsson's Millenium series will play that benchmark role for mystery thrillers over the next few decades.

"The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest" is an incredibly worthy successor to the previous two books in the trilogy. And toward the end, there will be moments when tears are brought to your eyes. Larrson knew precisely how to play with timing, rhythm, and wording to pace the story and its ending just right. I'm hard pressed to even guess how else he could have ended this series.

The story follows the natural conclusion of the events in the first two books as everything dovetails toward a "behind-closed-door" trial. Larrson did a very good job of the first part of this book that takes place in the hospital where Lisbeth is recovering. I really enjoyed reading things from her perspective, then spinning out to others involved and each of their limited pieces of the evolving puzzle. And things just get better as the book moves along.

Frankly, once you hit part three of the book, it's almost impossible to put down. I picked it up just once...just to read a chapter or two in the second half of the book...only to find that three hours had gone by and the book was over.

Larrson's tying up of many loose ends throughout the book - and this is key - throughout the book (not all in the last few chapters like so many other writers) is masterful. And that emphasizes the one tragic aspect of this final book: knowing that we will never again be graced with Larrson's storytelling mastery.

For the ending of this book alone, it is worth reading. However, while I wish I could say that this book was of the same caliber as that of the prior two books, in my opinion it was not. The book picked up right where the last left off, with Salander in the hospital being treated for her injuries. Blomkvist continues to sleuth on her behalf in order to expose those who have made her life hellish and attempted to frame her for all manner of crimes. Of course, in his spare time he also still manages to attract every woman within a 500-yard-radius like a bee to honey, but I digress. All of the other familiar characters from the prior books return.

I don't want to spoil the plot of the book, so I will give a general review. The overall feel of the book to me is that it was the least edited and least considered of the three. This would make sense if Larsson had intended to go back and do some more tweaking and editing before publication, but he was obviously unable to do so after his death. There are entire sections of the book that meander on and on with no apparent purpose with regard to moving the story forward. These sections would have benefited greatly from some serious editorial paring.

To me, the plot did not at all move along at the same clip as the prior books. The suspense just wasn't there to the same degree. I recall that I simply could not put down the previous books, but I was nowhere near as riveted by this one. In addition, there were a number of somewhat annoying grammatical errors, sentence fragments, etc.

For the good points of the book, the ending (if that is what we can call the last 150-200 pages) is a very nice, tightly written section that ties everything together beautifully. Again, it struck me that perhaps Larsson had written the ending earlier than the rest of book three, as it appeared to be the best-constructed section of the entire book. For the ending alone, this story is worth reading. I wavered between a 3-and 4- star review for this reason. Ultimately, I considered whether the book, standing alone without the other two, would be a 4-star book, and I don't believe that would be the case.

As an aside, one minor issue is that on the book cover of the copy I picked up while in Belgium, the first blurb says "The Trial", as if the book is mostly about Salander's trial itself, which it is not. The trial itself takes up about the last tenth of the book. Whether this type of advertising will occur with the North American edition I don't know, but I write this warning simply so you might know what to expect.

In summary, anyone who has read the first two books simply will not be able to deny themselves the final installment, nor should they. Although I did not find the book to hold the same level of suspense and I sometimes found it rather dull, the ending of the book makes it very worthwhile reading. It is a great loss that Mr. Larsson passed away before he could really fine-tune the final book, and before he could write another.

For those of you who have not read the first two volumes of this trilogy, I urge you to start on Volume one and proceed. The characters are so complex and real that an understanding of their background seems to me to be a must. The first two novels set up the reader for this wonderfully clever conclusion. The tale of good versus evil is one that is a history in time, and Stieg Larsson has given us a treat to savour.

The first one hundred pages of the third novel brings us up to date, and then we start the real read. More characters are introduced and at times during this 600 page read, I wondered if I could keep them straight. For the last two hundred pages, this book is very hard to put down. This is a tale of a series of conspiracies and how they come to cloud the Swedish democracy. How did Lisbeth Salander become the abused young woman, and will the people and times trying to destroy her win? And, Mikael Blomkvist, the journalist, will he be able to expose through his words, the wrongs that have been done. Will he regain Lisbeth's confidence?

Lisbeth Salander is in the Intensive Care Unit, she has been shot in the head. Her father is in a room down the hall, reportedly shot by Lisbeth. How did this come to be. Why are the Swedish Secret Service surreptitiously going in and out of his room? Why do we pick on those we do not understand? It is easier for us to believe those that are in power than to question the truth. The theme of the trilogy is that women are equals. There is no unnecessary overt sex and even though there is violence, it is believable. Blomkvist is a hero, he is the main antagonist and the muscle behind the investigation. He is out to assist Lisbeth Salander in becoming the woman she is meant to be instead of the woman who was looked at as the mad lesbian killer. He says, "When it comes down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it's about violence against women, and the men who enable it." The characters who surround them are wonderfully sketched out. We can picture in our mind's eye their faces and their countenance. This novel sums up the story of Lisbeth Salander, but leaves us wondering what is to be. Unfortunately, Stieg Larsson. because of his death, won't be continuing the series, it is up to us to find her rightful place.

It is easy to understand why this trilogy of Stieg Larsson's has become such a phenomenon. The search for justice and truth from a young, abused woman who has the nerves and strength of steel gives us all hope. We can believe through this wonderful narrative that the world is indeed a good place.

Highly Recommended. prisrob 10-13-09

The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage)

I bought my hardback from Amazon.UK because I couldn't wait until next year to finish Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy. The US publisher should move up their release date for this book, what the heck are they thinking?

No spoilers here! At 600 pages it's a whopper. The first half of the book is filled with at least 6 different stories being told and is a little hard to follow, but hang in there. It's when the stories begim to cross each other that makes it hard to put the book down. When you get to the last 200 pages, it's just impossible to stop. There are parts where the suspense builds and you get that awful feeling something really bad is going to happen. All in all, Larsson wraps his very feminist trilogy up nicely. I wasn't disappointed at all, only sad because that's all, folks.

4 stars because I loved "Played with Fire" as a 5 star book. Larsson wrote Salander as a remarkable unapoligetic feminist hero, and there is more of her in "Fire" than "Tattoo" and "Hornet's Nest."

This is the third book in what is now a trilogy of novels centered around the character Lisbeth Salander. Salander is unique -- a deeply flawed but also incredibly resourceful individual who will fascinate you. This book begins where the previous volume (The Girl Who Played With Fire) ends, with Salander brought to the emergency room of a hospital in Goteborg, Sweden, with three bullet wounds, including one in her head. One of the persons who tried to murder her later comes into the same hospital into a room two doors from Salander, bearing grievous wounds that Salander herself inflicted.

You will have to read the first two volumes of the trilogy to understand the storyline in this volume. That should be no problem, because the first two volumes were hard to put down. This third volume is the longest in the series, but it reads even faster than the first two. The first half of this volume sets up a situation involving legal charges against Salander that seem irrefutable, especially as police and prosecutorial resources are marshaled against her. Because of the charges against her, Salander is locked into her hospital room with no access to a computer and only very restricted access to information from outside. This lead-in creates tremendous tension, as the reader is allowed to look into the careful measures that Salander's friends and foes are taking to prepare for a courtroom denoument.

If you have already read the first two volumes in this trilogy, you will not need any coaxing to buy this third volume. It contains much less explicit descriptions of sexual behaviors than the second volume contained -- all to the good in my view. I found it to be the most exciting of the three volumes. It is rumored that a fourth volume in the series exists, but it is in need of editing and may also be locked up a long time in litigation regarding the deceased author's estate. Whether a fifth or sixth volume exist in outline form is anyone's guess, but we are unlikely to see anything beyond a fourth volume anytime soon, and even getting at the fourth volume in our lifetime may be a stretch. All of which is to say, get this book and enjoy it. It may be the last we ever see of Lisbeth Salander.

Have been reading since age 4 (am now 68) and mostly fiction for the past 50 years. A novel a week. This trilogy is, in my opinion, the finest series I have ever read and Hornet's Nest may be the very best piece of fiction I have ever read. I found myself purposely slowing down in my reading because I simply did not want it to end. These are not stand alone books. Read them as 1-2-3 and you will never forget the experience. The biggest problem is what to read when you are finished. Everything else pales by comparison by virtually every measure. I envy those of you who have not started the journey or who are looking forward to the second and third novels. I almost look forward to the possibility of Alzheimers so I can read these over and over for the rest of my life. I may do so anyway.

BR

I was surprised by how let down I was by this book. Yes, there were a lot of elements to it that I found deeply satisfying, but it just did not have the impact of the first and especially the second books for me. Where The Girl Who Played with Fire was so explosive I found myself gasping, this book just didn't provoke anything like that reaction for me. I'll write in very vague terms in an attempt to avoid spoilers.

First off, I have to say that I was very uninterested in the side plot involving Erika Berger. I've never really liked her character all that much, and having a good portion of the book devoted to her was a disappointment for me. I didn't feel that this aspect of the story did anything to move the plot. I can sum it up by saying that I felt it was unnecessary.

The most eye-rolling part of the story for me was Mikael's continued conquests. That guy gets around, and then some. This is a plot point that I frankly find silly as I've always found Mikael a pretty vanilla character, so it's a little difficult for me to determine just what is so irresistible about him. Throughout the series, I derived more enjoyment from reading about his journalistic methods than I did actually reading about him, and this book is no exception. He does gets points for being a champion for Lisbeth, though.

That said, it's probably not too difficult to figure out that what I most care about in these books is Lisbeth. What was really disappointing about this book was how long it took to bring her into the story. I found myself reading and thinking, "Where's Lisbeth?" Once the story began to revolve more around her, I was much more interested. I was quite satisfied with the way her story ultimately comes full circle. Though Lisbeth remains Lisbeth throughout the series, she does grow immensely as a character. I can see how she'd be the type to rub some readers the wrong way, but I think she's simply amazing. I read voraciously and there is simply no character like Lisbeth out there. I'm going to miss her terribly.

The best part of the book, by far, is the ending. It felt the most like the other two, with that sort of hold-your-breath suspense that I found so prevalent in the others. It also laid out a very interesting moral quandary. It was masterfully done, and I only wish that the rest of the book had been the same.

My overall impression is that this book wasn't as complete as the other two manuscripts. It could definitely have used more tweaking, which is to its detriment. Still, it is without a doubt a must-read for fans of the series. I am very glad to have it and am happy to have something of closure to the story. I very much regret that there won't be more.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

Stieg Larsson's three-part novel celebrates the author's admiration for powerful women through the typically masculine authorial device of having all the women fall for his idealized persona, Mikael Blomkvist.

The series of over-capable women who beg to have sex with Mikael includes a variety of characters, but Larsson isolates power as their core charm by focusing on the one who wouldn't seem to have any others, Lisbeth Salander. She has no figure, bad hair, no "personality," and doesn't cook, but aside from that ...

In Lisbeth, Larsson essentially gives Edmond Dantes (aka le Comte de Monte Cristo) a baby sister who shares her big brother's super-human powers, updated for the Information Age. Like Dantes, Lisbeth merges fantastic cunning and physical strength to escape imprisonment, work the system for an inexhaustible fortune, and create an unstoppable extra-legal machine of revenge for the outrages suffered by women in general including herself, and more particularly her mother (vs. his father in Dantes' case). She even celebrates final victory by sailing off anonymously to an island in the same sea as Dantes' isle of Monte Cristo.

The Mikael-Lisbeth team's adventures in suffering and righting wrongs provides the crime-thriller framework for the trilogy. Larsson writes plainly but unerringly and with detail and patience, yet he stuffs the trilogy with so many Hollywood camera-ready set pieces that you might suppose he also hoped to rival Dumas for sheer derring-do (and box office). But I think Larsson was wiser than that.

What rescues the novel from being a Larsson/Blomkvist wet dream is not just its political correctness but above all its ambition to rescue Lisbeth from the powerful woman's signature cynicism towards men and the world in general.

Lisbeth has it all, including taking sex whenever she wants it from whomever she fancies (female and male), and she generally looks down on the world, both for its glaring evils and just because she is so superior. She is also in a way more fortunate than Mikael in that the series of men who are interested in her are older and wiser. Mikael's women think he's cute and want his ... um ... body. Lisbeth's men think she's terrific and want her to grow up.

Larsson has enough perspective to cast himself (Mikael) as somewhat cavalier about relationships, but he also endows Mikael with an abstract ethical sense that he applies to society through his career in journalism and to Lisbeth as her friend. It's Mikael who harps to Lisbeth on Larsson's definition of friendship as a combination of "respect and trust." Lisbeth's other influences -- Palmgren, Armansky, Jonasson, Iversen (the judge), and one woman, Mikael's sister Annika Giannini -- all lecture her on the need to stop treating others with disrespect.

The author reads Lisbeth's mind as she gradually opens herself to appreciation of others (mainly men) as full people, who might want her (or any woman's) body in the right circumstances but who also just happen to like and respect her. (She's pretty wonderful, after all.) It takes Lisbeth a while to see that she might be happier (and more just) if she were to accept and reciprocate their friendship, with whatever quotient of affection that might include. As the trilogy proceeds she's getting there, and remember that at its end she's only 27 years old.

Larsson leaves the reader to imagine the course this will take. In the trilogy's closing lines, Lisbeth debates letting Mikael into her apartment for coffee, a friendly gesture that she decides to make even though it is still a challenge for her. But as it happens she's wearing only a towel.

So, what will it be? :-)