I didn't expect it to read like Steig Larsson
582785
Quite disappointing.  I didn't expect it to read like Steig Larsson, but the predictable plot, multitude of unnecessary characters and the endless computer jargon made for a boring read.
1403374
Good but the end is not so surprising. This is the second book from Asa Larsson that I read. I prefered "The Savage Altar".
4378089
The story starts off slow, and I became confused several times during the first couple chapter due to the bouncing around from scene to scene and the Swedish names/words, but once I figured each character out and what the words meant I couldn't put the book down.
1786143
The story is fitting and complex for a Lisabeth Slander book, but the writing is not as evolved/perfected as  Steig Larsson.
4002289
For someone not fluent in Swedish, this book makes a good read even if it's not a great mystery novel.
183377
It was a very good read but I found the Swedish names a bit difficult to remember especially as the author uses surnames a lot.
It was slow to start rather like a Frederick Forsyth with a lot of background to fill in first. There  was a lot of violence [the norm these days perhaps] which I don't much care for.
It had a lot of interesting twists and turns and quite a finale.
Not easy to think of any other comparable work.
2372995
It was a great read. Very engaging and exciting. If I hadn't known, I would have thought it was written by Steig Larsson, the author of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It had the same coldness, darkness, and warmth. The main characters, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salandar, a.k.a.. "The Wasp" were just as compelling as they were in Larsson's books, I hope Lagercrantz continues this series with more. I think, or at least I hope Larsson would have been very pleased with this book. I am, and I am so glad that Lisbeth was brought back to live again, and is able to fight her demons, and that Blomkvist is able to fight for journalistic integrity.
3325424
This mystery/crime novel is a mystery within a mystery, a special police squad is almost at the point of being disbanded, as their talents haven't been needed in a while. A tortured body is found in an American airport, and the victim happens to be a Swedish citizen. All of a sudden, the police squad's expertise in international crime is needed, as a serial killer is believed to be impersonating the murdered man and on his way to Sweden.

I found the story to be full of interesting twists, and the translation was excellent, which isn't always the case when a novel is originally written in a different language.

I think fans of police/crime/mystery stories would probably enjoy this one, I believe it is good enough to rate reading more than once.
1275471
Since I started reading on the Kindle I haven't read that many print books. But when I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at a garage sale for $1.25 I couldn't resist, especially with all the hype. Wow, what a deal that was. This is a serious novel. The first 20 pages or so made me feel like a complete idiot! I kept wondering why everyone liked this book so much and if it was just over my head. There were a lot of foreign references and name dropping that was confusing. Don't let this discourage you. Once the story got going it was much clearer and really hooked me.  Mikael Blomkvist, a financial journalist, is in the midst of a scandal. With no prospects and facing some jail time, he accepts an offer to look into a 40 year old mystery; the disappearance of a young girl. Blomkvist does well on his own, but later enlists the help of a talented but strange investigator with issues of her own. I loved considering all the scenarios and trying to figure out the mystery along with the characters. The author made me feel as though I actually came to know Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander and I look forward to meeting them again in the other books. While writing this review I checked Amazon for some information about the book and author and was saddened to find out that Stieg Larsson died in 2004.
4837891
Like several other reviewers, I am a Scandie crime freak who jumped a a chance to read an offering from Finland -- something of an empty quarter in the teeming landscape of Nordic crime.  And, like several other reviewers, I was underwhelmed, at least at first.  Nobody, to begin with, seemed that much interested in the murder of the very attractive and sucessful son of a prominent family -- no screaming headlines, no senior police officials, no slamming shut of the borders, no MENACE.  Instead, a rookie detective is assigned, the father clearly wants it to be an accident, and the friends of the victim move on with their lives with hardly a pause.  Eventually, the detective does solve the crime, but there isn't much drama in the process.

Still and all, I liked it better by the time I finished than I did for the first fifty pages or so.  The Finnish setting is definitely interesting -- peoples' attitudes are very different from American attitudes in some key ways, and so are the ways they live their lives.  The food sounds, er, interesting too.  And the detective sort of grew on me -- she is a pain, but she does have an inner life.  Also, I wonder if a good deal of the problem with the book -- its overall flat tone -- isn't an issue of translation.  At the end, I decided to download the next volume in the series, and give Maria another chance.
3927182
This book surprised me. When I first started reading it, I didn't like it. I usually read straightforward books, either mysteries, biographies or business books. I didn't quite know what to make of this book. But as I got further into it, I started enjoying it more.

What I enjoyed about this book:

**It kept me guessing. Aside from the first story, Space, which I didn't care for, I couldn't stop reading the other three stories to find out what happened.

**It made me think. Since the book is not straightforward and is more of a philosophical book, I had to pause and figure out what Gregory was saying and what he really meant.

**Each story created a different feeling. Chapter 2: Four Rooms seemed to be about mental confusion and what is reality. Chapter 3: The Principle of Luidgi seemed to be about how people can manipulate one another. Chapter 4: Guest seemed to be about dreams and love lost. Other readers may have different interpretations, but that's the beauty of this book.

What I didn't care for in this book:

**I didn't like the first story, Space. It's probably because I didn't really understand it. But, I also didn't like the graphic s** scene descriptions. Call me a prude, but I don't think that descriptions like this add anything to a story.

If you are looking for something different to read and a book that makes you think, than you might enjoy this book.
3722965
A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, was a surprisingly quick, page-turning read.  I wasn't expecting this, as it was assigned for school, but I really got into it.  It was not a novel that I would have picked up on my own to read in my spare time, but this kind of thing happens a lot with books that we are assigned to read in school.  I always expect to dislike it, but I end up not being able to put it down.

  One of the things I enjoyed about this book was the honesty of it.  An author, musician, or any artist should always tell the truth.  And this book did just that.  Beah offers very graphic descriptions that meek authors may shy away from.  He writes about the terrible things he did, just to survive.  The brutal realities in this book are not sugarcoated, because if they were, A Long Way Gone would not resonate the way it does.

  Before reading this book, I can honestly say that I didn't have a very good idea of what was happening in Africa.  I was just familiar with the AIDs epidemic, but one of the great things Beah did was paint a very detailed picture of an Africa I had never imagined before.  I didn't know this civil war was occurring in Africa, or how brutal it got.  Beah could go from describing a peaceful village to describing scenes of horrific violence, like a woman running and screaming with her murdered baby on her back.  This image is what I see when I think about A Long Way Gone.

  Although I did like this book overall, there were a few things I didn't like about it; this could simply be because this type of book would not be my first choice to read on my own time.  The writing seemed distant at times, but the subject matter makes this understandable.  Beah didn't go out of his way to describe the people in his book.  His descriptions are wonderful and the book moves fast, but what's happening in the novel doesn't give the characters much background or personality.  I'm used to reading books with very strong personalities and character development, like Catcher in the Rye and Perks of Being a Wallflower.  I can easily relate to these books, and obviously most people that read A Long Way Gone can't relate.  This book was a dramatic change of pace for me.  This isn't a bad thing, though, because reading about a distant, radically different continent can teach about a culture through a novel, which to me is more interesting than simply learning about it in school.

  Overall, I would give this novel a 7.5 out of 10.  I liked it, I didn't love it, and I wouldn't say it's my favorite book. In these boys' world, they have no control over what happens to them and are often at the mercy of other people or in extremely dangerous situations. This is an important concept in this novel.  The action surrounding the people in Beah's book dominates them, instead of the other way around.
3575117
Having heard so much about this book I felt obligated to read it and see for myself why it has generated so much buzz. As someone who didn't know a tremendous amount about the story going in, I found the book to be much more violent and horrifying than I expected.

The book consists of two storylines involving disgraced financial reporter Mikael Blomkvist, and socially-inept hacker Lisbeth Salander. Together the two are trying to uncover the mystery surrounding the death of corporate heiress Harriet Vanger, and expose the financial misdeeds of a prominent tycoon. I was much more taken with the Vanger mystery than with the story about corporate corruption. That was rather dry.

One of Larsson's larger objectives in this book is clearly to highlight the disturbing pervasiveness of violence against women. All of the significant violence in the book is gendered, and is perpetrated against female victims. One of its victims is co-protagonist Lisbeth Salander. She is certainly an interesting character, one who is uncomfortable with what many of us might consider basic sociability. She is also a woman who has endured much abuse, and that makes her essential to Larsson's larger point. One of Salander's most significant problems is that legally she is considered a ward of the state. She had been in this position as a child without competent parents, but her status as a legal dependent was allowed to continue into her adulthood. The fact that an adult who earns her own money, holds a job, and is capable of managing the basic elements of day-to-day life can be legally alienated from her money and her basic legal rights is, quite simply, frightening. Clearly Larsson is making an argument against the institution of guardianship. I was unclear if the portion of the text which explain guardianship were part of Larsson's original text, or if they were added by the translator for the non-Swedish audience.

This is not the most amazing book I've ever read, but it's a book I'll certainly think about for some time. I suspect I'll read the next two books in the trilogy, as long as I can stomach the violence. Larsson does not glorify the horrific violence about which he writes, but it is, undeniably, difficult to read.
3190775
When Mikael Blomkvist writes an article taking on one of the most prominent business men in all of Sweden, and loses, his life takes a turn for the sharply unexpected and continues on the path as a private investigator for an intriguing disappearance that happened decades prior. Armed with nothing but cold case files, Mikael is tasked with finding out what really happened to Harriet Vanger before it becomes too late.

Lisbeth Salender is a brilliant yet edgy and unconventional hacker who spends her days as a part time freelance PI who is undoubtedly the most detail oriented worker that has ever existed. With her own personal tragedies at the forefront of her mind, meeting and teaming up with Mikael was the last thing that she had ever wanted to get involved with. By putting their minds together, can this oddly matched team close this exciting case for the Vanger family, or will it remain forever unsolved?

I have to say, I didn't expect this at all. As a lover of the book first method and usually a missed the hype boat rider, Ive never seen the movie and never knew what the book was about. I chose to read it for one of the 2016 popsugar challenge prompts on audiobook and Im so excited that I did. The most important thing to note is that this book is gory at times. It touches on an extremely dark part of life that some would be appalled to even consider. If you can get past the prospect of terrible things and love logical and extremely detailed detective mysteries masked with espionage and an entirely too satisfying bit of revenge, this book is definitely one you have to pick up!

All characters reach so far beyond developed that I was sucked in at every point in the book.  While I probably wouldnt be friends with Mikael since he seemed a little dull and a little piggish in the romance department, I was still extremely happy with how each one was written and the story each played, with maybe a few exceptions from some of the outside Vanger branches.

Overall, I really loved it, it also doesnt hurt that Ive been interested in Sweden for many years now. I know Ive seen some meh reviews but as a person who loves this genre and loved the gritty darkness of the book, Im happy. Well worth my time.
1522378
Having read rave reviews about Steig Larsson's debut novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I had high expectations. At the same time, I was a bit wary with the knowledge that most hyped books end up to be disappointing reads because my expectations are initially so high. So I approached the book with some trepidation and was surprised to discover that none was necessary; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo really was an amazing read that blew any expectations I may have had out of the water.

In some ways, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo really reminded me of Tana French's novel The Likeness. The subject matters weren't similar by any means, but they both had an exceptionally literary quality that is difficult to find in mysteries. Any fan of Tana French would most likely enjoy this novel, as they are both exceptional mysteries.

I had trouble putting Larsson's novel down. From the prologue itself, I was completely gripped by this powerful novel. I felt like I had to know what happened, and was completely satisfied with the conclusion. Though all threads weren't resolved, I felt like my curiosity had been sated. The characters were also very well written and personable. All in all, it really was an impressively well-written novel

I was surprised when I discovered that the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson, passed away in 2004 from a heart attack. However, he left three unpublished manuscripts behind, the first of which was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. These three novels were written as the "Millennium Trilogy." The second book, called The Girl Who Played With Fire, is set to be released in the US on January 8, 2009 - a book I will most definitely be reading.
2642522
If youve not read the first books by Stegg Larssen you may not find this one as interesting. It captures Lisbeth but not quite as clearly. The whole premise was fascinating and didn't just happen in Sweden.
4681011
This book started out a bit slow because there were many details from the previous book to clean up.  But, just like Larsson's other two books, once Lisbeth Salander gets into the picture the plot explodes and takes you along with it.