Date of Completion: 18/07/2021
At its very core, ‘The girl with the dragon tattoo‘ is a book that is centred on crimes against women. This core theme is woven into a tale rife with financial intrigue, corporate crime, and a murder mystery. Was this overly ambitious for one book? To some extent, yes.
Keep in mind that I’m crazy, won’t you?
The impact of the different and complex subplots in the book is felt right from the start. Readers are first introduced to the business and political aspects of the book. Then, the two main characters are developed for some time before the mystery aspect is set up. This results in a slow start that was certainly not helped by the fact that:
- I found the business and political aspects rather boring.
- I could not connect with the main characters initially.
- I viewed the murder mystery as a hopeless case.
In addition, Stieg Larsson’s writing did not make a huge impression on me. I would not call his writing thrilling or mesmerising, but it is not monotonous either. I think my main problem was with the mass of unnecessary details and information provided. I was also not a fan of the abrupt changes between the point of views (POVs) of the main characters. However, I do acknowledge that alternating POVs has its merits as in this book it helped highlight a few glaring contrasts in the experiences of the main characters.
Fortunately, things did pick up substantially about halfway through this book, as new leads and evidence come to light regarding the murder mystery. The book’s pacing essentially takes off from ten to a hundred in the span of a few pages. The tension and suspense are also ramped up with several twists thrown into the mix. Altogether, these made it very hard for me to put this book down as I could not wait to see how everything would be resolved.
What’s more – by the time the storyline picked up, both of the main characters had managed to grow on me. I had come to love the eccentric and reserved nature of the female lead, Lisbeth Salander. She is definitely a badass – you do not want to get on her wrong side! She is well contrasted with the male lead, Mikael Blomkvist, your run of the mill, regular guy with glaring imperfections. Even so, I could not help but like Mikael especially when he began to work together with Lisbeth.
Unfortunately, none of the other characters in this book stood out to me. This is likely because I had a hard time keeping up with the numerous characters, especially those associated with the murder mystery. A diagram is provided at the start of the book to help with this but I still struggled as there were far too many things and characters to keep track of.
She was perfectly content as long as people left her in peace. Unfortunately society was not very smart or understanding.
All things considered, ‘The girl with the dragon tattoo’ is a gripping read that managed to pack in some good twists. However, it does have a slow start as there are several themes to introduce and flesh out. I also found the main characters and writing rather lacking and this is why I am giving a rating of 3.5 stars. Despite this rating, I am still very intrigued about what Mikael and Lisbeth will get up to in the next book, so I will definitely be picking that up!
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