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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)

Stieg Larsson,

Reg Keeland (Translator)

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Apr 27, 2014 Bogdan rated it liked it

Shelves: nordic-freeze

Decent crime novels are hard to find and I used to revert to classics when I was in the mood of reading one. This is why I enjoyed very much this fist novel from Millennium series. Despite not using the classic recipe of detective novels, it was an enjoyable read.

The premise is the fist element where Stieg Larsson deviated from the classic genre recipe. Of course it is about a murder, more precisely about a missing person. But it also treats a lot of other subjects. If it is to name the most pro Decent crime novels are hard to find and I used to revert to classics when I was in the mood of reading one. This is why I enjoyed very much this fist novel from Millennium series. Despite not using the classic recipe of detective novels, it was an enjoyable read.

The premise is the fist element where Stieg Larsson deviated from the classic genre recipe. Of course it is about a murder, more precisely about a missing person. But it also treats a lot of other subjects. If it is to name the most prominent one, of course it is about men hating women, as in the original Swedish title (preserved in Romanian translation). These men, even if for a time escape penalty, they are punished in the end. I believe this premise is true and it is also delivered fairly OK. This is why I will give it a 4.

The form pretty much follows the genre requirements. He uses fairly simple literary technique, as the accent needs to stay on the story itself. The journalist formation for Stieg is fairly helpful for this and there are rare moments when you can see the supporting folding behind the story. One such moment is after the main conflict is resolved and other minor conflicts are following soon. This bad timing of conflict resolution, makes the reader think about how it should have been written this last part of the novel. This is why I will give it a 2 for form.

In terms of originality, it is fairly hard to say something new in a genre so popular. Too many novels exists and it is hard to come up with something original. Still, it is fairly interesting that I noticed some aspects new to the genre. The dark atmosphere and the care for more general premises are perhaps signatures of this novel and perhaps of Millennium series. I will give it a 4 at originality.

The characters are pretty much in the average range in comparison with other novels. They are not too badly constructed and are fairly distinctive one from another. But Mikael Blomkvist is fairly close to a Gary Sue while Lisabeth Salander and some of the Vanger family characters are so much out of ordinary that they are not credible. Other reviewers have also complained about characters and in such a situation, I will rate it with a 2.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, the length of the novel is one of the pluses, but the main one is the actual complex missing person/murder case. But despite these, I don't think it was too hard for the author to write it. So I will rate it with a 3 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, in the big picture, the story holds. But there are a lot of details in most parts of the story that are not necessarily credible or may sound slightly forced. If you can pass over this, it is an enjoyable novel. My rating for credibility is 2.

The last criteria is edition. My eBook had two issues: one with the incorrect display of some diacritics from Romanian language and another with the broken links to footnotes. Because this made my reading more difficult, I will rate it with a 1.

To summarize, I liked this novel and I will definitively try more from the Nordic authors of detective stories. All in all, my final rating for this collection is 2.57, which I will round to a 3 on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 2.57 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+

For more details on how I rated and reviewed this novel, please read these guidelines. ...more

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Jul 16, 2019 Farhana Faruq rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

This was excellent and so disturbing at the same time. It's also book one of a trilogy. The story started of slow (like every book I've read with more than 600 pages) but be patient because the entire story comes together so perfectly. It's well written and despite being slow, it wasn't boring.

A discredited journalist is hired by a wealthy man to solve a murder. Parts of this book are disquieting enough that I would not recommend it to everyone. ...more

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Nov 24, 2010 Nadia added it · review of another edition

I've just started it today and since the first page im literally swallowing every page. i feel like im on a journey with no clear destination and roads to take. i love it.

P.s A book like onion. so much layers and dimensions. absolutely love it. ...more

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