The party starts, and I am late. Years late. Again.

Usually, when I am reading a series of books, I order one book at a time to spread out the damage to the budget over time.  With this trilogy, I did not follow the usual procedure, ordering The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest at the same time.  And boy, am I glad I did!

There is nothing like ending one book and immediately being able to pick up the next one and start reading.  No wait.  No gaps in memory. No flashbacks to remind the reader what happened previously. The amazing thing about these last two books is the incredible continuity between them.  Where Fire ends, Hornet's Nest picks right up.  I love that, in part, because it happens so rarely between books in a series.

Now Fire was published in 2009 and Hornet's Nest in 2010, which explains why I'm late to the party. These were the paperback editions.  Before I purchased them, I read the reviews on Amazon, something I rarely do because many of the reviews contain spoilers.  And for some even stranger reason, I choose to read all the bad reviews.  Fortunately, they did not have a negative effect on my reading, but those bad reviews were certainly entertaining in and of themselves.



These books are kind of hard to explain.  They are not three separate stories but rather one story told in three volumes. This is not just a crime, who-dun-it murder story.  There's some espionage and defection and political corruption and conspiracy and scandal thrown in. There is Russian mafia and Sweden's version of Hell's Angels.  There are several love triangles happening - it would take a very large Venn diagram to work those out.  There's a stalking situation that seems to be unrelated to crux of the story but serves as an important device to move a character from one place to another.  It's a very large story, covering quite a bit of geography in Sweden and Europe.  But there's also redemption and revenge and justice, poetic plus legal, and a whole lot of people working together to vindicate a single person, to right an egregious wrong.

The most fascinating, and rather surprising, aspect of these stories is how they advocate for women and women's rights, so much so that sometimes it is hard to believe these novels were written by a man. In Hornet's Nest, each part of the story is led by a blurb on women and combat.  Part 1's blurb is about women fighting  in wars.  Part 2's is about Irish law banning women from combat and the Greeks discussing Amazons.  Part 3 gives more information about the Amazons of Libya.  Part 4 begins with a brief history of an all-female army of West Africa.  The main character of these novels is a woman, fighting for her life, her spirit, her emotional health and her freedom.  The other main character is a man, fighting for this woman, not in a romantic way, but in a freedom-for-all kind of way.  Stereotypically, the villians are really evil brutes, and not a woman in the bunch.  The father is the worst character of all; I certainly did not see that one coming, and I really like that, when I can't predict the direction a character or novel is going to take.  Formulaic fiction this is not!

While the ending of Fire left a lot to be desired, the ending of Hornet's Nest neatly wrapped things up and ended much better.  So much better, it forced me to think about the main character, Lisbeth Salander, and how she had grown and changed over the course of these three books.  I always enjoy character growth and development.

Reportedly, Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara will reprise their roles from in the movie of Fire.  I hope I don't have to wait too long.  Maybe while I'm waiting I'll check out the Swedish movies of these books.