Book review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Well ... this one is tough to review. It was slow to start and it's not a genre I'm really into, because there was no supernatural or science fiction aspect to it. That makes it kind of boring to me, no matter how well-written a story is. And this one is well-written! It's incredibly done, very detailed, sucks you right in. It never gets bogged down much, but there were times when I couldn't follow exactly what was going on. It's an issue with audiobooks, as I can't easily go back and reread a section if I didn't get the point. The book was full of places in Sweden and names which were probably common there. I heard them, but it's amazing how difficult it is to hold something like that in your head when you don't have all the layered references to it like I would have for, say, Boston.
Also, I kept waiting for the girl with the dragon tattoo to be, you know, central. She was important to the plot, definitely, and had the most riveting character arc, but she wasn't the protagonist, the villain, or the rescued damsel (or even related to the rescued damsel, which was my theory for the first two-thirds of the book). Characterization was awesome throughout. I liked how sensitively the author treated a variety of relationships, including very abusive ones. I'd like to say he made the villain far worse than can exist in reality, but the truth is that reality has included a few people just as bad, and those are only the ones we know about for sure.
It was good. I recommend it strongly. It's a long book, though, so be prepared for that. And it has some rough, scary parts in it that I found borderline triggering, but I got through it.
Also, I kept waiting for the girl with the dragon tattoo to be, you know, central. She was important to the plot, definitely, and had the most riveting character arc, but she wasn't the protagonist, the villain, or the rescued damsel (or even related to the rescued damsel, which was my theory for the first two-thirds of the book). Characterization was awesome throughout. I liked how sensitively the author treated a variety of relationships, including very abusive ones. I'd like to say he made the villain far worse than can exist in reality, but the truth is that reality has included a few people just as bad, and those are only the ones we know about for sure.
It was good. I recommend it strongly. It's a long book, though, so be prepared for that. And it has some rough, scary parts in it that I found borderline triggering, but I got through it.