The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo Who Played With Fire and Kicked The Hornets Nest

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
by Stieg Larsson

I jumped on the "The Girl" bandwagon towards the tail end of it, as the third book was coming out in hardcover form- worrying briefly and ultimately unneccessarily that all the previous hype had clouded the book for me, and I was destined to enjoy them, but not be blown away.

I was still pretty blown away.

Lisbeth Salander, and Mikael Blomkvist, have definitely been added the list of serial characters I love, making author Stieg Larsson's death just after finishing the third even more devastating, as Lisbeth Salander's tales of subterfuge and cyber espionage would reportedly have continued for at least several further novels.

(Side note: his partner, Eva Gabrielsson, retains the laptop on which he was working on the 4th novel. The rights to this book are currently being debated; there is also speculation as to whether it was meant to be the 4th book or actually the 5th book in the series, which was to include 10.)

The books center around massively intricate plots involving lots of conspiracy and government cover-up, which, if you know me, is exactly the kind of book I love to curl up with and dive into.

If you haven't read them yet, I'd make several strong reccomendations:

1) Wait until you can read them one right after the other. Rich in detail, plot, character development and with twists and turns along the way, these books seamlessly blend into the next, particularly the second and third. If you pause too long between them you'll risk forgetting the buildup of the previous.

2) The books, as you might know, take place in Sweden. The names of the characters, thusly, are Swedish. I found it a bit hard at times to keep track of who was who and got distracted at trying to figure out how to pronouce the names. I found I enjoyed the story much more when I let go of this and assigned a mental "face" to each name, which helped me keep track of the characters, particularly in the third book.

I am in the camp of "excited to see them make a movie" about these books, where some fans are hotly against and some are hotly for. Like any make-into-a-movie, I think there is merit to the idea and anticipate some adaptation.....and again, like any other, highly recommend the books first!