The Air Castle That Exploded

The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson 
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson

            Why am I trying to review Played With Fire and Kicked the Hornet's Nest together in one review?  While they are sequels to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo the second and third volumes of the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy read more like one two-part large novel than anything else.  In fact, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest begins probably, at most, an hour after the conclusion of The Girl Who Played With Fire and essentially continues that story.

Before you read further, though, I must warn that I cannot 100% say that this review is spoiler-free as to the previous book in the series.

            Ok...with that out of the way, the story begins with the rumpled Swedish journalist Mikael Bloomkvist, having returned to Millennium after the events of the previous novel, getting a scoop from a young, idealistic freelance journalist about a massively far-reading Swedish prostitution scandal.   However, just prior to the story's publication, Bloomkvist's the people who bought the story to Millennium are found murdered and the evidence trail begins to lead back to an unlikely source: Bloomkvist's now- estranged friend and former lover, Lizbeth Salander.

           Bloomkvist is unconvinced at the evidence pointing towards the titular "Girl" and he spearheads Millennium's own investigation to prove Salander's innocence.  With Salander having understandably having disappeared and running her own investigation into the murders, Millennium eventually must team up with both Salander's former employer's investigation and the police detectives trying to prove Salander's guilt. 

         What I liked most about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was the socially-awkward Lisbeth Salander, so I found it odd that I liked this novel so much considering probably for 1/3 of the novel, Salander disappears.  Her limited back-story and strong personality in the first novel easily stole the story from Larsson's doppelganger Bloomkvist; however, her disappearance for a large chunk of these novels didn't hamper the story much at all.

         My guess as to why Salander's limited "on-screen time" didn't bother me is that most of Bloomkvist (and really all the other character's motivations and actions) revolve around Lisbeth Salander - either trying to help or hurt her.   The novels show are feel mostly focused on Salander, including her backstory which was just hinted at in both the book and film versions of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

       Like Dragon Tattoo, both of the sequels could have used some tighter editing.  In the third novel, there is also a subplot involving Erika Berger, Bloomkvist's boss and occasional lover, which, while interesting, seemed a bit out of place amidsts the rest of the story.  Considering that I understand Larsson originally intended this series to have ten parts, I'm willing to assume that that premise was supposed to be expanded in the subsequent novels.  Plus, there are some loose ends, such as Lisbeth's mysterious twin sister, which aren't really resolved, and feel like the mentioning of the character so often (relatively speaking) was supposed to be a set up for a future story in the series.

            There has been word that there may be a fourth and fifth novel coming out based upon Stieg Larsson's unfinished manuscripts, but since there appears to be a legal battle brewing over those, these three novels may be the last we see of Lisbeth Salander for a while.  Oh, anti-social, tattooed warrior of your own style of justice....how little we knew ye and how we long to hear of you again!

Although....as to the American-version of the film, Daniel Craig, possibly best known recently of James Bond fame, is not at all how I picture the disheveled reporter Bloomqvist...

"The name's Bloomqvist.  Mikael Bloomkvist."

Ratings:
The Girl Who Played With Fire: 4.5 out of 5.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: 4 out of 5.
Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy: 4.5 out of 5.