The Girl Who Played with Fire: A Lisbeth Salander Novel

I tried reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (paperback version) years ago when it was just gaining popularity, but I stopped after a couple of chapters. I am embarrassed to say that I had trouble keeping track of who’s who. I think it may have had something to do with my unfamiliarity with Swedish names. However, I was pleasantly surprised years later when I started reading the Girl Who Played with Fire in the Kindle version. In the Kindle version I was able to highlight a person’s name whenever I wanted to confirm who they were, and a note would pop up a tell me who they were in relation to the other characters and the plot. This made my reading experience so much better and I was able to immerse myself in the story and characters much better. I highly recommend this whole series, but especially in the Kindle version for the non-Scandinavian readers.

This was a good read it's a trilogy the first and third books are a lot more fast paced and thrilling the second book dragged a little in the middle for me. The main ie girl (Salander) is by far the best character you will definitely develop feeling for her in this trilogy. If you read book one then it's worth reading all 3 and it's very sad the author is no longer with us he would be happy to know there are so many people wishing for a 4th book ( I hear there might be a 4th script ready) . They are very enjoyable and full of edge of your seat fear very fast paced and nail biting the will make up want to jump in the book and save her to me that's a great read it I want to be part of it . I did not see the movie or read the Swedish books which I hear are absolutely brilliant. Sex trafficking is a very real problem all across the 🌎 globe .

Still not finished with it yet. This is a sequel to his first book (which I >THOUGHT< had a terrible ending.) This book resolves/fixes book 1's terrible ending. Wish I had known at that time that there was going to be a sequel. This guy is an ....,"interesting" author. I read a lot and his style and ?quirks? take a little getting used to. He is an author that, for me, i can only chew on 50 pages at a time, but am happy to get back to.

Steig Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy is one of the most documented, most reviewed, and most successful sellers on Amazon. This review is not of the books per se, that would be about as redundant as possible. This short review (if found like a needle in a haystack by someone looking for this specific topic) is a product review of the Random House Large Print editions in soft cover, which I purchased from Amazon as they came out in 2009-10.Volumes as large as this, purchased as mass-market paperbacks can be as cumbersome to read as eye strain can get. If you are not a Kindle reader, take great comfort in physically holding a nice big book, and love that new book smell, this is the way to go. The soft cover binding is both strong and pliable, easy to hold on your lap, in both your hands, or set up on your chest in bed. The large print is a very comfortable contrast typeface that is perfect whether or not you wear glasses. The paper quality is superb, and all in all, Random House has spared no expense at producing a high-quality product for boomers who like to read “real books” and want to rest the eyes when devouring a massive epic like this one. At $20-25 per book, you might be thinking why not just buy the hard-back edition. Good question! At the time it was even higher priced than this one and I was under wallet restrictions. I do have to say, however, these large editions are handsome on the shelf, feel nice and comfortable in handling, and offer the perfect mixture of easy on the eyes and perfect manual dexterity friendliness. You can’t go wrong with a publisher like Random House, their bindings are solid, paper quality the highest, and their print is superior to many others.

I only gave this four stars as I think that the first 20% of the book can be skipped.SPOILER ALERT. Basically she travels around the world and has some adventures that have nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the story. If he had dropped this part and started when she arrives back in Sweden I would have given this a higher rating. Once back in Sweden the story takes off and has many twists to keep you turning the pages. The book has very good pacing once back and kept me guessing as to what actually had occured and who had done what to whom. Although this is a still a dark tale of the soul, unlike the first book there is not as much explicit description of sexual deviation as in the first book. The author creates characters that seem real. They may not like each other for some vague reasons or even no reason at all, just like life. On a lighter note , at least in the early oughts in Sweden, it seemed to me as though they must have consumed huge amounts of coffee. It was as though throughout the book everyone is either drinking coffee or making coffee or offering to make coffee .

I’ve been aware of these books for years, but the title of the first put me off and I never considered reading them. Having been given ‘The girl with the dragon tattoo’ for free I reluctantly read it. I was hooked. I loved the story. It grips you and doesn’t let go until the end of the book. The second book is even better. It is painful at times and difficult to read. I got so emotionally tied up with the characters that I grieved and felt real loss and hurt at times for them. Have just downloaded the third book and am about to start. If you have any hesitation about reading this and feel it is not your kind of book...don’t. Best series I’ve read for years.

There are a lot of things I could take issue with in this book. For one thing, the style includes a lot of extraneous detail which slows the pace unnecessarily (do we really need to know exactly what they eat at each meal?) and there is an entire section at the beginning of the book that has very little relevance to the main part of the plot. It may, perhaps, serve to introduce the main character, Lisbeth Salander: but anyone who has read the first book in the series, 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' (and I would certainly recommend doing so) will be quite familiar with her. And in any case, she is a mystery to be explored and one which develops throughout the book as we come to know more about her and her past.The plot itself seems to me to rely a little too much on useful coincidences and chance meetings, and some incidents strained my credulity.However, in spite of all these things, this is still a great story and a hugely absorbing read that kept me awake far too long.Partly, that may be due to the plot which, flaws not withstanding, is deep and intriguing, with surprising twists, amazing revelations, and a whole succession of hooks to keep the reader wanting to know more. The mystery at its heart appears impenetrable, but it has a brilliant resolution.And its also due to the main character: Lisbeth Salander is probably one of the most fascinating creations in fiction: someone with remarkable talents, considerable depths and a frightening potential for violence. You probably wouldn't want to meet her in real life, but finding out about her, watching her in action and wondering what she'll do next is riveting.So I shall put aside all my issues and look forward to reading the next volume!

What makes a book into a runaway success? The Girl Who Played with Fire is a triumph: it grabs you from the word go and holds you tight until the last page. It repeats, possibly surpasses, the success of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first in the Millennium trilogy. I expect that the third one will be equally irresistible.So let’s see what the main ingredients are.Firstly, there is the utterly mesmerising heroine, Lisbeth Salander. She is a walking contradiction. A damaged and vulnerable woman in the big bad world; a mathematical genius; painfully antisocial; brutally uncompromising, but also highly principled and moral. Immoral… I could go on. She is absorbing. She draws you into her psyche, but only as far and as deep as Larsson allows you to go. And then you hit a brick wall, and you must tunnel your way through to her past, to what makes her tick.Secondly, all other characters are fleshed out, living and breathing, preoccupied with their own agendas. Their paths cross and intersect; then diverge, only to align again. The narrative perspective shifts between them rapidly, but they are so distinct and so well drawn that you will never get them confused. The relations between them are complex and multi-layered.Thirdly, the plot is a masterpiece. Seemingly unrelated events feed into each other like tributaries of the violent, unbridled storyline-river. Deeply-seeded secrets are alluded to at first, then slowly teased out of the characters’ past.Fourthly, the prose flows easily, unobstructed. It is subservient to the plot and characterisation. It never takes the driver’s seat. You don’t feel the burden of reading – instead, you just absorb the story through your skin.Fifthly, the background knowledge is impressive. You know you’re dealing with an expert. Whether he is taking about computer hacking, weapons or publishing procedures, Larsen knows his stuff.Lastly, you are on Salander’s side. She has to win. Good has to triumph. The lines between right and wrong are clearly drawn. That’s not to say that Larsen is politically correct in his portrayal of Salander and her methods. All that matters is that your gut instinct tells you that she is damn-right and so you read on, rooting for her to the bitter end.

Larsson was an exceptional writer and had an uncanny talent for detail. He develops the characters so thoroughly that you could perceive them as real people.This book is a very good read, however I did not think it was quite as interesting as the first book. I found the story to be too far fetched. What I enjoyed about the first book was that it seemed like an extraordinary event was occurring but it was kept in the realms of the realistic. However with this book the events are too coincidental, and at times they do not always completely make sense.Larsson has also turned the book into something of an Ikea advert. I lost count of the amount of times Salander bought an item from Ikea, or sat on an Ikea chair, or lay on an Ikea bed.Despite this, the story is exciting, and you will find that you can't put it down until you've reached the end. On to the 3rd book!

Excellent follow up to Dragon Tattoo, probably excels it in my view. Larsson had a superb writing style and a way of making you really care what happens to all his characters, so unveiling the background to Lisbeth's past life works really well as this book goes along, together with further developing her off beat partnership with Mikael Blomqvist. Gripping and intense, plot moves along swiftly with lots of intertwined threads that come together in unexpected ways- a little too much graphic violence for my taste in some parts which is why I didn't give it 5 stars, but none the less highly recommended. Sad that he was unable to write more than this Trilogy before he passed away.