Sign in with Facebook
Beth 's Reviews > The Millennium Trilogy
The Millennium Trilogy (Millennium Trilogy, #1-3)
by
by
The first of three books in the Millennium Series, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, has a slow beginning. The first half presents two separate lives in Sweden: Mikael Blomkvist, a 40-something journalist convicted of libel, and Lisbeth Salander, a 24-year-old eccentric computer hacker working for a security firm. The first half was boring.
Eventually, the book gets better when Blomkvist and Salander join forces to find a murderer of a member of the Vanger family who disappeared 40 years ago. The Vangers, including husbands, wives, adult children, cousins, aunts, and uncles, are all very rich and very strange. Together they own a worldwide corporation, and they mostly hate each other. Blomkvist and Salanlder uncover their deep, dark secrets, discovering secrets much worse than they bargained for, much worse with every page.
The book is billed as a mystery/thriller. But mystery/thriller lovers should be warned: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO contains only a small portion of what I would call "thriller." That is near the end of the book when Blomkvist, after figuring things out and confronting someone, discovers the hard way (the really, really hard way) that, as bad as what he figured, it was way, way worse. Again, that is near the end of the book.
The majority of DRAGON TATTOO is mystery, not thriller. And too often the mystery is tedious as Blomkvist and Salander search and research old news clippings, picture archives, old snapshots, others' writeups, etc.
I was assured that the other two books are better than the first, so I read the next in the series, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE.
However, this book is also, I feel, a bore in its first half. Most of it describes Salander ("THE GIRL") in more detail than DRAGON TATTOO did. Frankly, the extra detail made me like her less. I saw her as nothing but a caricature, not someone I could care about.
In the second halfof PLAYED WITH FIRE, Salander, who has managed to get copies of several people’s hard drives, learns that Blomkvist plans to publish the findings of a fine upstanding couple investigating sex trafficking crimes. This interests Salander. So she visits the couple, and the next thing we know, they’re dead.
Salander is accused of murdering them and, within a short time, she is all but convicted of the crime in the eyes of the public and the police in Stockholm. (Don’t forget, this story takes place in Sweden.)
The rest of the book involves Salander hiding out from the law and the few people who think she’s innocent doing the job of the police.
And all the new characters introduced in PLAYED WITH FIRE are more caricatures. I can easily imagine them in a Saturday-morning cartoon, especially the giant who feels no pain and is afraid of the dark and the ponytailed, pot bellied bad guy who's no match for Salander. I could clearly see "ZAP" and "POW" during the batman-like fight scenes between the bad guys and the unbeatable Salander.
The third book in the series, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, is a continuation of the story in PLAYED WITH FIRE. HORNET’S NEST does not have a boring first half, and it is, indeed, better than the other two.
In this book, Blomkvist is a tramp, taken to bed by, seemingly, every attractive female who comes along. This even as he organizes “The Knights of the Idiotic Table,” a group of all the people who want to see a good outcome for Salander. She’s in the hospital, miraculously still alive after being shot in the head. The police are guarding her room because they think she is a murderer. When she recovers, she goes to jail.
But “the knights” are investigating a small group within the Swedish police who they suspect are corrupt. When they get to the bottom of this, Salander will be free. Of course, Salander helps by illegally hacking into the computers of any high-level official. And she does so from her guarded hospital room.
In the meantime one of Bloomkvist’s love (read “sex”) interests, Erica, has an ordeal of her own going on. Not surprisingly, Salander helps her, too, as she illegally hacks into the computers of newspaper reporters and managers, again, from her guarded hospital room.
Of the three books in the series, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST is the best. But the series as a whole does not deserve all the attention it is getting. Classics, the kind of books everyone remembers years later, the books I’m proud to have in my bookcase, deserve this.
The Millennium Series is up there with former bestsellers like PEYTON PLACE and THE STEPFORD WIVES, the kind of books that get attention for a while. But the Millennium Series is not classic.
Eventually, the book gets better when Blomkvist and Salander join forces to find a murderer of a member of the Vanger family who disappeared 40 years ago. The Vangers, including husbands, wives, adult children, cousins, aunts, and uncles, are all very rich and very strange. Together they own a worldwide corporation, and they mostly hate each other. Blomkvist and Salanlder uncover their deep, dark secrets, discovering secrets much worse than they bargained for, much worse with every page.
The book is billed as a mystery/thriller. But mystery/thriller lovers should be warned: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO contains only a small portion of what I would call "thriller." That is near the end of the book when Blomkvist, after figuring things out and confronting someone, discovers the hard way (the really, really hard way) that, as bad as what he figured, it was way, way worse. Again, that is near the end of the book.
The majority of DRAGON TATTOO is mystery, not thriller. And too often the mystery is tedious as Blomkvist and Salander search and research old news clippings, picture archives, old snapshots, others' writeups, etc.
I was assured that the other two books are better than the first, so I read the next in the series, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE.
However, this book is also, I feel, a bore in its first half. Most of it describes Salander ("THE GIRL") in more detail than DRAGON TATTOO did. Frankly, the extra detail made me like her less. I saw her as nothing but a caricature, not someone I could care about.
In the second halfof PLAYED WITH FIRE, Salander, who has managed to get copies of several people’s hard drives, learns that Blomkvist plans to publish the findings of a fine upstanding couple investigating sex trafficking crimes. This interests Salander. So she visits the couple, and the next thing we know, they’re dead.
Salander is accused of murdering them and, within a short time, she is all but convicted of the crime in the eyes of the public and the police in Stockholm. (Don’t forget, this story takes place in Sweden.)
The rest of the book involves Salander hiding out from the law and the few people who think she’s innocent doing the job of the police.
And all the new characters introduced in PLAYED WITH FIRE are more caricatures. I can easily imagine them in a Saturday-morning cartoon, especially the giant who feels no pain and is afraid of the dark and the ponytailed, pot bellied bad guy who's no match for Salander. I could clearly see "ZAP" and "POW" during the batman-like fight scenes between the bad guys and the unbeatable Salander.
The third book in the series, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, is a continuation of the story in PLAYED WITH FIRE. HORNET’S NEST does not have a boring first half, and it is, indeed, better than the other two.
In this book, Blomkvist is a tramp, taken to bed by, seemingly, every attractive female who comes along. This even as he organizes “The Knights of the Idiotic Table,” a group of all the people who want to see a good outcome for Salander. She’s in the hospital, miraculously still alive after being shot in the head. The police are guarding her room because they think she is a murderer. When she recovers, she goes to jail.
But “the knights” are investigating a small group within the Swedish police who they suspect are corrupt. When they get to the bottom of this, Salander will be free. Of course, Salander helps by illegally hacking into the computers of any high-level official. And she does so from her guarded hospital room.
In the meantime one of Bloomkvist’s love (read “sex”) interests, Erica, has an ordeal of her own going on. Not surprisingly, Salander helps her, too, as she illegally hacks into the computers of newspaper reporters and managers, again, from her guarded hospital room.
Of the three books in the series, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST is the best. But the series as a whole does not deserve all the attention it is getting. Classics, the kind of books everyone remembers years later, the books I’m proud to have in my bookcase, deserve this.
The Millennium Series is up there with former bestsellers like PEYTON PLACE and THE STEPFORD WIVES, the kind of books that get attention for a while. But the Millennium Series is not classic.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
The Millennium Trilogy.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
March 15, 2011
– Shelved
