Customer Reviews

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I read this book in french. It is the first part of a trilogy. This is not your "usual" thriller. The characters are very important and the author takes his time to present each one of them with the location in the first 100 pages. So the reader must not be impatient. The first book has a story in itself. The second book has the same main characters but the plot is different and the third book starts exactly where the second ends.
I thought the second was better than the first and the third was the best of the three.
The sad news is the author died of a heart attack just after giving the manuscript to his editor. So there will not be a fourth book.
This is a page turner, I could not put it down and everyone who read it (on my recommendation) loved it.
A definite MUST.

I was late in picking up the two first books of Stieg Larsson's trilogy and when I did I decided to leave them for the beach. I can now assure you that THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is much more than a summer page-turner.

The story flows effortlessly yet is full of unexpected turns. Looking back one can only admit that, although he did not see it coming, the outcome was to be expected. No suspension of disbelief required here, the story could easily have been taken from news-reports. Larsson was a master of understanding human nature and life's minute nuisances.
What is more, this book reminded me of the good old classics that contained a healthy dose of moral lessons within their gripping story. Good literature should entertain as much as it make you think.

The only thing I regret is not being able to read Larsson in the original Swedish (always a handicap) but as far as I can tell the translation (by Steven T. Murray, under the nom-de-plume of Reg Keeland) is fluid and very well done. No awkward phrasing or translation artifacts that would gum up the experience. The book might as well have been written in English.

It is very unfortunate that Larsson died so young. He would have had a stellar carrier as a writer in front of him. Non the less, his Millennium Trilogy is what he will be remembered by.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I have always had different tastes for books, and have never gotten into something that had been given a lot of attention. I had avoided this book and the series for that matter for a long time. I finaly gave in. I enjoyed the book, although it was not to die for like some people claim. It is almost an information or detail over load. Very well written, for sure. When I was done reading I thought, or great now I have to read the other two books for the ending. I am so glad I did cause they get better and better, and the information over load pays off after all.

I have not read the book yet, but the book itself is in perfect condition. $10 -- such a great deal for a hard copy!

I cannot say enough good things about this book. The storyline is interesting, the characters are very well filled out, the suspense is crackling, what more do you need? I actually watched all three movies before I read the books, which is something I don't normally do. I don't like knowing the ending when I'm reading a suspense novel; however, a friend of mine recommended the books so highly and said they have so much more in them than the movie, I decided to read them anyway and I am so happy that I did.

Even if you've watched the Swedish movies or the one American version, read the book! It gives so much more background and detail than either of the movies. Once you've read this book, you'll want to go on to the other two in the trilogy, and they are also worth reading.

My biggest regret about these books is knowing that the author died and there are no other books written by him. What a shame for the reading community.

I have been waiting a long time to read this book. Unfortunately I expected to be able to just pick it up and read it fairly quickly. This was however, not what happened. I hit a very hard brick wall upon opening it and starting to read. It was a horrendous fight to read this book all the way through. The author was so detailed in his descriptions to set the scene and get the story under way that I and the ladies who were reading it along with me really had to fight hard to not give up on reading this book in its entirety. The detailed content in the first 200 pages give or take were the hardest to swallow. Once the story picked up at the point where Mikael is working for Vagner and really into into the police reports and interviewing the family, then it was a bit easier and more fluid to read through.

The first half though caused me to have to take numerous breaks from reading the book because the tedious and boring sort of writing style it was extremely difficult to swallow and read at any sort of a pace. Coming from someone who reads very quickly, this book took several days longer than it should have for it's size and topic.

That being said the story was very good, despite it's writing style and descriptive over kill problems. I do endeavour to read the other two books in the series. Unfortunately they are also written in this exhaustive and boring manner until the story pick up and zooms along in the later half of the books. I plan on approaching them with more time to read them in so I can take my time and take breaks and not feel rushed and forced to buckle down so hard to push through it. I recommend having other books on the go so you can interchange between them to help you be able to read them and not feel buried under mountains of verbal diarrhoea.

I am happy to finally be done this book, but I am happy that I read it as it's a great story.

For these reasons I score the book 3/5. The movie was great, but having read the book now, they missed out on SO much it's actually quite disappointing upon reflection. That being said I do still like the movie, while not as much as I did before knowing the complete story. Which I expect to be the case with the other two movies of the Swedish renditions.

Priscilla

I loved this book. Some sections were very difficult to read, so it is not for the feint of heart. I mean difficult as in hear-wrenching, not particularly challenging language-wise.

It did start off slow, and at first I was thinking "What's all the fuss about these books, this is boring" but a friend told me that it did pick up, so I hung in there. After the first few chapters, it did really pick up, and by the middle I could scarcely put it down. I was reading it on the bus, at the gym, between classes, basically any time I had 5 minutes (<3 Kindle). At the end, I stayed up way too late to finish it, was tired the next day, but well worth it.

As a university student studying history, I haven't had the chance to read a novel outside of class for a while. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a great welcoming present for me to delve into the world of fictions again. The characters in the book were full of flavour and the storyline was well constructed by Larsson. The only downfall of the book for me was the ending, which I felt was very disconnected with the rest of the book.

I found this book utterly amazing. The characters, which there are many, are rich and dynamic! The main plot of the book takes a little while to get off the ground, but the background information is necessary in order to properly understand what exactly it going on in the book. Lisbeth is an amazing character, with many, many different facets. The story line keeps you totally engrossed and actually wondering what is going on, wanting to solve the mystery right there with them.

There is much talk about this book and it certainly lives up to my expectations. Just remember, once you get past the beginning with the background information, the book roars away at a fast pace.

It's rare that I end up preferring a film to the original book, but in this case, the Swedish film far surpasses the written word.

The beginning and the end of the novel were painfully slow with the majority of the action taking place in the middle. Lisbeth didn't come to full fruition until the later chapters and that troubled me to no end; she's a fantastic character, why waste her? Why wait so long to establish her role in this story?

I'm hoping that the next two books in the Millennium trilogy will be much better.