The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I finally finished the third and last installment of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. I finished the second book four months ago just before the big New York publisher's started the "Agency Pricing" agreement that keeps the price of e-books higher than paperback in many cases.

I had bought the first two e-books in the series for my Kindle at roughly $5 and $7 respectively, so when the last one was raised to $12.99, I balked. I decided to do my own protest by purchasing a Kobo e-book (reduced at a Borders Book Store going out of business), and getting in the queue for the e-book from the library. That was January. It took until the end of May before my number came up.

The third book is missing the element that drew me into the series in the first place. Namely Lisbeth Salander. (Spoiler alert, maybe) At the end of book two, she had been shot in the head, shoulder, hip; buried and left for dead. Then she dug her way out and in a final stroke hit her evil father in the head with an axe. My kind of girl!! But really, it's that determination, and kick-butt attitude that sucked me into reading these thrillers.

The third book begins hours later with Salander in the hospital still alive, where she remains until she can go on trial for murder of three other people and attempted murder of her father. So for half of the book, she can't kick butt. But of course I have to read on to see how she gets out of the mess.

I had gotten used to the abundance of Swedish names of people and places that were often very similar. Nieminen and Niedermann, and everybody is somebody's son or strom. And streets/roads ending with gatan, making for many seven syllable words. Hey, I studied German including a year at the University of Munich. I thought I was used to long names...and umlauts. But I was OK with it for two installments. It seemed that this final book was a convergence of all the people and places from the first two. And throw in some feminine warriors for good measure. I hated that there was no mention of Yaa Asantewaa.


In the end, I was glad it was all over and all loose ends were wrapped up. It was a good thriller with some heart-thumping moments.

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