Once I opened this book, I just couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting. I *loved* the previous instalments in the series (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire) but The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest is definitely my favourite of the three. The book is as well-written and plotted as the previous instalments, what's more, it's even better structured. Lisbeth Salander is my heroine, probably the best and most original female character I ever came across in a book! I'm still wondering how Larsson managed to make a troubled, anti-social, sullen, paranoid, pierced & tattooed computer hacker so attaching, but he certainly did it! What's also surprising is that none of the other characters are superfluous. Every single character depicted in the book is relevant in some way, even if only mentioned in a few lines.

What makes the Millennium books such intelligent, compelling and exciting reading is that they are much more than thrillers. They are feminist and depict strong women who fight and kick back when they are abused or attacked. They are also about sensationalist journalism, abuse of power on an institutional level, politics and ultimately offer fantastic insight into contemporary societies.

As was I nearing the end of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest, I felt a growing sadness because I knew there would be no sequel and no other book by Larsson, who passed away in 2004 before the Millennium trilogy was published. It is said that Larsson had planned to make Millennium a ten-book series and that a manuscript of the fourth instalment in the series was found in his laptop after his death. Unfortunately, the public might have to wait for a long time to see it published (if at all), because of the legal battle taking place between Larsson's family and his companion of 30 years, Eva Gabrielsson.

What to do now? Go back to square one and start reading the trilogy again:)

Amazon.co.uk Review:
A young girl lies in a hospital room, her tattooed body very close to death -- there is a bullet lodged in her brain. Several rooms away is the man who tried to kill her, his own body grievously wounded from axe blows inflicted by the girl he has tried to kill. She is Lisbeth Salander, computer hacker and investigator, and the man is her father, a murderous Russian gangster. If Salander recovers from her injuries, she is more than likely to be put on trial for three murders -- the authorities regard her as a dangerous individual. But she won't see the inside of a courtroom if her father manages to kill her first.

This is the high-tension opening premise of the third book in Stieg Larsson’s phenomenally successful trilogy of crime novels which the late author (a crusading journalist) delivered to his publisher just before his death. But does it match up to its two electrifying predecessors, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl who Played with Fire? The success of Larsson’s remarkable sequence of books is, to some degree, unprecedented. Crime fiction in translation has, of course, made a mark before (notably with Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, published, in fact, by Larsson's British publisher, Christopher MacLehose). But even the success of that book gave no hint of the juggernauts that the Salander books would be (the late author's secondary hero is the journalist Blomqvist -- who bears more than a passing resemblance to Stieg Larsson himself).

There are two overriding reasons for the hold that this massive trilogy has attained on the public: machine-tooled plotting which juggles the various narrative elements with a master's touch and (above all) the vividly realised character of Lisbeth Salander herself. She is something of a unique creation in the field of crime and thriller fiction: emotionally damaged, vulnerable and sociopathic (all of this concealed behind a forbidding Goth appearance), but she is also the ultimate survivor, somehow managing to stay alive despite the machinations of some deeply unpleasant villains (and the new book has a slew of those) as well as the hostility of often stupid establishment figures, who want her out of the picture quite as passionately as the bad guys. She is, of course, aided by the protective journalist Blomqvist, despite the fact that she had dumped him as a lover. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest brings together all the elements that have made the previous books of the sequence so successful. Its relentless pace may be a bit exhausting for some readers, but most will be happy to strap themselves in for the ride. It's just a shame that this will be the final book in the sequence (though conspiracy theorists are hinting that Larsson began another manuscript before his untimely death…)

Book sent to an unsuspecting BookCrosser today as part of the Wishlist Challenge, enjoy! :)

Today, the postman knocked on the door to deliver a heavy package. I had no clue what was inside as I hadn't ordered anything and wasn't expecting anything from BookCrossing, so I opened it to find a nice surprise wishlist rabck. Many thanks chich! You were right, I certainly was unsuspecting, thank you, you made my day!

Review coming soon.

Left on the shelf.