I did it. I broke down and finally got ahold of this book. The 'it' book of the summer, I had been curious about these books (I've read the first two so far, am hoping to get my hands on the third at some point.) and I am happy to report that overall, they don't disappoint- but lord-ee did I have some issues with volume #1.
It's gotta be a bitch, trying to write a trilogy- the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Star Wars trilogy, so many trilogies out there and they all seem to contain the same basic rules. The first volume introduces the characters, the second volume drops them in the shit and the third volume lets them redeem themselves. So it is, so it has been and so, seemingly will it always be and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is no exception. Therein lies my only complaint: this is not a bad book, by any stretch of the imagination, but WOW does it take a long time to get to the point. Drag, drag, drag, drag, drag and then wam, bam, thank you ma'am suddenly it's interesting, fun and suspenseful.
My only complaint out the way, let's get to business: Stieg Larsson has crafted one of the most incredibly powerful female heroines in modern literature with Lisbeth Salander. An ambitious statement, to be sure, but I stand by it. Salander, a hacker, probably autistic to some degree, strong, powerful, seemingly amoral, yet working with her own set of rules strides through the pages of this book like a hurricane, struggling and surviving some truly horrific situations before coming into her own helping out Kalle Blomkvist, a crusading journalist seeking (funnily enough)career redemption.
Blomkvist provides a nice foil to Salander, though it seems to be the other way around a lot of the time, as the disgraced journalist who is looking for redemption after being convicted of libel in court for screwing up a story. When a wealthy (and mysterious- dum, dum DUM) industrialist comes calling asking Blomkvist to unravel the decades old mystery of the disappearance of his niece, Blomkvist agrees and eventually gets sucked into a truly grisly and suspenseful series of events that brings him first into contact with Salander (the titular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and then with what really happened all those many years ago and the suspense is so carefully strung out through the book that the reader is kept wanting more. To be totally honest with y'all, it was all I could do the keep from flipping ahead in the book to find out what was actually going to happen and who done the deed. (I proved to be wrong on several aspects of both questions in the end.)
Overall, Larsson more than redeems his slow start and the book races to a surprising (you would hope so, what with it being a mystery and all) and satisfying conclusion that accomplishes two main things: it leaves the reader feeling satisfied at what they have read- and more importantly, it leaves them wanting more. Which they get in volume #2.
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