The Girl Who Played With Fire

It's ironic that a novel with as tedious and drawn out beyond all sane reason an ending as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo had should spawn a sequel that's biggest, though by no means only flaw, is it's overly busy and rushed climax. Yet that's exactly what you get with The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Leaving the end until the end though, what else is there to be said about The Girl Who Played With Fire?

Well, you could say that within it's 569 pages is a taut 250/300 page thriller fighting desperately to get out.

You could say that the peril befalling the protagonists veers worryingly close to cartoonish at times.

You could say that the plot relies *far* to heavily on coincidence.

You could even say that Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, so mesmerising as creations and so competent as characters in the first book, are compromised beyond repair.

The plot this time around, when it finally gets going, is a far more personal one for Salander, and delves much further into her history, her social circle such as it is, and the behavioural issues that saw the state declare her incompetent to manage her own life. All of which, sadly, is presented with all the dramatic flare of a cost/benefit powerpoint presentation at the AGM of a plastic spoon manufacturer. Persevere though, and there are some nuggets of gold.

Blomkvist, on the other hand, is brought into the plot entirely by a series of coincidences and he  blunders around being even more of an arrogant, selfish tit than he was in the first book, while his sexual/relationship proclivities continue to present the burning question of why any woman with half an ounce of grey matter would give him the time of day.

Neither character comes out of this book looking particularly good, but they can at least rest easy in the knowledge that they are the leads so Larsson doesn't dare do as thorough a hatchet job on them as he does on every other character in the book.  Every second man  we meet is a sadistic misogynistic pig, and those who aren't are borderline incompetent; while the women, who are few and far between, spend all their time acting like gullible mugs. It's all well and good to tell us how smart and independent and savvy the women are, but when their every action belies that assertion, you're doing something wrong.

That last paragraph leaves something of a sour taste, because it would be obvious to a blind pheasant who only reads Urdu that Larsson has some pretty hefty anger towards what he sees as social injustices, whether motivated by misogyny or otherwise. His message is a good one. It's just a shame he isn't a better writer, and the whole thing comes off smacking of naivete.

The Girl Who Played With Fire is full of narrative dead ends as well. To give one, very prominent, example; the whole opening of the book. Not to put to fine a point on it, but it's entirely pointless. Salander is living it up in a secluded paradise with some of the money she nicked in book one when she figures out that one of the other guests at the hotel is planning to kill his wife. A storm hits, and Salander uses it as cover to kill him first.

Now, had this been used as a means of saying "Look, she's willing to kill, so she might be guilty of these crimes she's accused of" I could understand it, but that's never even intimated. Had the police discovered her crime, or at least suspected it, and used it to bolster their theories about her, I could have understood it. Neither of those things happen though, and you're left to wonder why Larsson bothered writing any of it.

From the beginning of the book, to the end of the book; it just stops. Absolutely nothing is resolved; he villains are still out and about being villainous, Salander is still on the run accused of murders she didn't commit (but not accused of the one she did) and while Blomkvist has figured out a fair amount of the story he's in absolutely no position to do anything about it. Come back for book 3 suckers!

In fact, you could spend almost as long relaying the books flaws as Larsson spent creating them. It would be pointless though, and not a little churlish; because you see, the book is eminently readable and immensely addictive. The flaws niggle and the flaws annoy, but they don't stop you reading. I'd like to tell you why but... I don't know. What meager critical faculties I might once have possessed have admitted defeat at the hands of this book and all I can say is... it's objectively rubbish, but if you read it, you'll probably enjoy it.

As I typed this post I came to a realisation that I didn't reach while actually reading; Larsson is a Star Wars fan! A standalone first story, followed by a sequel that digs into the lead's past, makes a massive reveal about their paternity, leaves another major character incapacitated, has no real ending to speak of and is pointless without the 3rd part. The Girl Who Played With Fire is The Empire Strikes Back! Only not as good, obviously.