by Stieg Larsson
(68)Release Date: May 25, 2010
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Paperback)
For the ending of this book alone, it is worth reading. Nevertheless, 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 far away, the injured with Salander in the hospital being treated for her. 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 the 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 family 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 less considered of the three. This would make sense if Larsson had thought to go back and do some more tweaking and editing before publication, but he was obviously unable to do so after his death. There is 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 books not at all move along at the same clip as the prior. 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 number nowhere near as riveted by this one. In addition, there were a of somewhat annoying grammatical errors, sentence fragments, etc. For the good indicates rowboat of the book, the ending (if that is what we call the last 150-200 pages) is a very pleasant, 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 smaller don't believe that would be the case. As an aside, one issue is that on the book cover of the copy I picked up while in Belgium, the trial the first blurb says "The Trial", as if the book is mostly about Salander's 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 at times book found it rather dull, the ending of the makes it very worthwhile reading. It is a great book loss that Mr. Larsson passed away before he could really fine-tune the final, and before he could write another.
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