The Girl Who Played With Fire (#12)

Larsson's second novel in the trilogy (I'm really anxious to see how the trilogy finishes) picks up almost right where the first novel leaves off.  I would definitely say that to get a full understanding of the relationships between the characters, as well as the full picture of the individual characters themselves, the first book is a must (and excellent). The characters flow seamlessly from the first to the second book, and I really liked that this book gave the reader the opportunity to get a better handle on Lisbeth, one of the book's main characters.

The story is full of twists and turns, but Larsson makes all of the revelations throughout the book completely believable. The key to the believability of the book is the strong characters.  They are more neither stock characters nor are they so far from the realm of possibility that it is a stretch to believe they could pull off various moments in the book.

As was true in the first book, this one took me about fifty or so pages to get into.  The stories are not overly complex, but there is a lot happening in the books simultaneously, or else the setting up of the sequence of events needs enough story behind it that it seems almost unrelated to the plot. However, it leads to a better understanding of the characters, their situations, and their relationship with each other.

I'm interested to see if Lisbeth's sister will play a more prominent role in the last book: she seems to be an integral part to the story, but in ways that are still unclear.  Mikael's sister also seems to be relatively important, and I really liked the relationship they shared in the second book, so I would like to see more of her.  Finally, I'm curious to see how Berger's storyline plays out - her story was not concluded at the end of the book, and I'm betting that she ends up being an important player as the next book unfolds, even though she is not my favorite character.