A Scottish-Canadian Blethering On About Books

Well, they made us wait long enough for the paperback of this, but it's good to have that arc finally wrapped up - because this really was volume 2, part 2, rather than a true volume 3. The one element that was really specific to this final volume was the introduction of the rogue Secret Service unit as the underlying motivator behind the violence. In some ways I was sorry to see that, because it seems to me to undercut the very real rage against violence against women which underlies the first story; it's the domesticity and personal nature of the violence which is such a source of strength in that novel. To ascribe it finally to ideology instead seemed cold to me.

Nonetheless, the story moved fast, and I very much liked that Lisbeth Salander came to a satisfactorily climactic realization that she did not have to give in to her reflexive murderous impulse when she had her monstrous half-brother finally in her power. (However, there's no sentimentality in her ingenious solution, which effectively gets rid of him anyway).

Though it's decidedly on the bloodthirsty side for my taste, I really loved this series for its array of strong and well-differentiated women characters.