The Millenium trilogy continues with a brilliant second book. (The Girl Who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson)

Member Name: Gemma_C

Product:	The Girl Who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson
Date:	30/05/09 (255 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Just as addicting as the first one, it's brilliant.

Disadvantages: Lisbeth's character sometimes annoys me, but she's certainly a new type of character.

The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second book in the Millenium trilogy by Swedish author Stieg Larsson, translated into English by Reg Keeland. The first book in the trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, became widely popular and in my opinion was a brilliantly addicting crime thriller.

Stieg Larsson was a Swedish writer and journalist who died young from a sudden heart attack after he had finished writing the 3 novels in the Millenium trilogy, and so never lived to see how successful they have become.

The book follows on with the original characters from the first book, namely Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. After the events from the first book we follow Lisbeth as she is currently travelling for the year, and Mikael Blomkvist who is dealing with the recent success of his book, published after the events of the first book. Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist for the Millenium magazine and already they have found another great scoop for another book based on the sex traffic industry in Sweden.

Lisbeth, a brilliant computer hacker, discovers what he's up to next by hacking into Millenium's computers and quickly becomes involved carrying out her own research into the matter. However, not long after she is suddenly the number one suspect in a double murder, closely followed by a third, with some very damning evidence pointing to her.

The rest of the book follows Mikael investigating the murders, determined to find the truth behind it all whilst convinced it has something to do with the book about to be released by Millenium. We also follow the police department who are on the hunt for Lisbeth, who comes across as a mentally deranged girl after having spent years in psychiatric care and also under the care of a guardian after the state declared her incompetent. However the police department become confused when faced with Blomkvist and other characters who know Salander well, all he portray her to be totally different from the description the police have of her!

The book can be quite hard to follow at times as there are lots of characters involved, and it can sometimes be so hard to remember who is who! It also doesn't help when some of the Swedish names are really similar to one another, and sometimes had to check who was who. Once you get further into the book you do get used to this, but even toward the end I was still getting a bit mixed up! Despite this the characters used in the book are great, however I always struggle with the character of Lisbeth Salander.

Lisbeth Salander is an anorexic genius computer hacker, with a photographic memory and reading into complex mathematical equations as a hobby, yet later in the book can also take down two very strong men on her own! She is no good in social situations and doesn't have many friends outside of her computer hacking world, and those who consider her a friend, such as Blomkvist, she doesn't return the feeling! She is certainly an unusual character that I haven't come across in a book before, and I sometimes struggle with it, but she is certainly new and different compared to the usual police detective of so many other crime thrillers.

Once you get about half way through this book you will be hooked, the same happened with the first book in the trilogy. It has a very addicting storyline that you can't put down, the type of book you look forward to reading when you come home from work.

The Millenium trilogy so far really isn't your average run-of-the-mill crime thriller series and I can't recommend reading it enough. The story is very entertaining and not totally unbelieveable. The story switches from character to character so you don't grow bored of reading from one person's view, and it's great to read what's going on in every part of the storyline as it unfolds.

If you are planning to read this book, then you have to start with the first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to help fully understand the characters and the past behind them in this book.

This book is currently available in Hardback with the Paperback version due out in July, you can buy this on Amazon for £8.49.

Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc (6 Jan 2009).

Summary: A really good read, much better than your average crime thriller!