Alaska Employment Law

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest, Stieg Larsson
 
I have previously reviewed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire, the first two volumes in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, which were published after his death in 2004 and have thus far sold over 12 million copies worldwide.  (There is a statement on Larsson’s web site that a partial manuscript of a fourth Lisbeth Salander book exists, but don’t get your hopes up.)  Larsson, who was known, before his posthumous fame as an author, as an ardent foe of racism and neo-Nazi advocates in his country, is deeply concerned with the abuse of women in Swedish society throughout his trilogy.
 
Because the plot of each book builds on its predecessor, I am disinclined to say much about the 600-page plot of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest, which begins where The Girl Who Played With Fire left off.  However, I will observe that Lisbeth Salander stays in one room for the first 400 pages or so of the book, which is fairly remarkable for a provocative, anti-hero computer hacker given to bouts of violence and wanderlust.  Just as with Girl Who Played With Fire, I couldn’t wait for the American release of Hornets’ Nest and ordered it from the UK; and even after it arrived I was reluctant to start reading it, because I knew that when I was done, I would be DONE.
 
Honestly, it’s not easy for me to explain the great appeal of these stories, which take place in Sweden and were written in Swedish (the translations are excellent).  In many ways, they are about the rights of individuals versus the rights of government, a timely subject.  Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant, uncompromising young woman who weighs about 100 pounds and stands barely five feet tall, is compelling and really like no other figure in the genre.   The writing in these books is neither brilliant nor very stylish, but the themes and the plotting are completely seductive.  It won’t surprise you that I recommend The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest – but do read all of them in order.