Jessica
I actually liked this better than the first book, at least until the goddamn CLIFFHANGER ENDING, which can't really count as a thing to make me dislike the book. (Well... I guess it could? But for me it doesn't. Not really.)
Good, so now that's settled. The book does start really, really slowly - the first 15% or so could be condensed so much, and there's lots of needless description devoted to such topics as Lisbeth's furniture purchases - which, needless to say, are never relevant to the rest of the plot.
As far as I can recall, it took until I was 40% of the way through the book for the really key event, the one that triggers all the drama and suspense, to happen. Then there is a veritable explosion of new characters, new intrigues, new mysteries, etc. and I could only just barely keep on top of it. This is another of the reasons I'm irritated about the cliffhanger ending - I have no idea how much of those characters, intrigues, etc. I'll be expected to remember by the time I get to it, although admittedly this book did a pretty good job of summarising the important plot points from the last one in case I'd forgotten what they were (I hadn't - that book was a breeze to understand compared to this one - or maybe that was because I read it faster), so...
I continued to love Lisbeth Salander; I know I should probably have some kind of political objection to vigilantism, but I share Lisbeth's revulsion for the cops and honestly, it's just so satisfying to see people we know (because the narrative told us) are the bad guys get their comeuppance. This is like 90% of the reason I read books so you know I'm going to love it.
Although, in contrast to what I wrote in my review of the first book, this time I did not like Mikael Blomkvist. Or I don't know, it's not that I didn't like him so much, but it seemed to me that he was just serving as this wish-fulfilment character for the author. That is, he's this man who's just so perfect in bed and he has all of these relationships on the go with all of these interesting women and he always remains on good terms with them after breaking things off, with the sole exception of Lisbeth Salander... but it seemed to me that after I noticed this the author did too, and the sections from Lisbeth's point of view are full of her making jabs at him, calling him “Practical Pig” or... ok apparently I lost all my other quotes but things along the line of “insufferable do-gooder”. And I would read these things and be like, “YES, THANK YOU.” It is actually possible that these comments were there all along, and not just after I realised how annoyingly perfect Blomkvist was... but maybe not, I don't know.
So overall, I did enjoy this book better than the first one, but not enough to give it a higher star rating (they're both four stars!). There are just too many flaws for me to give it a five-star rating - the slow beginning, the lengthy paragraphs about Ikea furniture, that kind of thing. Happily though, there was much less space devoted to the accounting of the Millennium newspaper, or any of the corporate intrigue that bored me the first time round. It's a good read and reasonably political, so I'd consider it a great follow-up to the first one.
I actually liked this better than the first book, at least until the goddamn CLIFFHANGER ENDING, which can't really count as a thing to make me dislike the book. (Well... I guess it could? But for me it doesn't. Not really.)
Good, so now that's settled. The book does start really, really slowly - the first 15% or so could be condensed so much, and there's lots of needless description devoted to such topics as Lisbeth's furniture purchases - which, needless to say, are never relevant to the rest of the plot.
As far as I can recall, it took until I was 40% of the way through the book for the really key event, the one that triggers all the drama and suspense, to happen. Then there is a veritable explosion of new characters, new intrigues, new mysteries, etc. and I could only just barely keep on top of it. This is another of the reasons I'm irritated about the cliffhanger ending - I have no idea how much of those characters, intrigues, etc. I'll be expected to remember by the time I get to it, although admittedly this book did a pretty good job of summarising the important plot points from the last one in case I'd forgotten what they were (I hadn't - that book was a breeze to understand compared to this one - or maybe that was because I read it faster), so...
I continued to love Lisbeth Salander; I know I should probably have some kind of political objection to vigilantism, but I share Lisbeth's revulsion for the cops and honestly, it's just so satisfying to see people we know (because the narrative told us) are the bad guys get their comeuppance. This is like 90% of the reason I read books so you know I'm going to love it.
Although, in contrast to what I wrote in my review of the first book, this time I did not like Mikael Blomkvist. Or I don't know, it's not that I didn't like him so much, but it seemed to me that he was just serving as this wish-fulfilment character for the author. That is, he's this man who's just so perfect in bed and he has all of these relationships on the go with all of these interesting women and he always remains on good terms with them after breaking things off, with the sole exception of Lisbeth Salander... but it seemed to me that after I noticed this the author did too, and the sections from Lisbeth's point of view are full of her making jabs at him, calling him “Practical Pig” or... ok apparently I lost all my other quotes but things along the line of “insufferable do-gooder”. And I would read these things and be like, “YES, THANK YOU.” It is actually possible that these comments were there all along, and not just after I realised how annoyingly perfect Blomkvist was... but maybe not, I don't know.
So overall, I did enjoy this book better than the first one, but not enough to give it a higher star rating (they're both four stars!). There are just too many flaws for me to give it a five-star rating - the slow beginning, the lengthy paragraphs about Ikea furniture, that kind of thing. Happily though, there was much less space devoted to the accounting of the Millennium newspaper, or any of the corporate intrigue that bored me the first time round. It's a good read and reasonably political, so I'd consider it a great follow-up to the first one.