Book Reviews
A thoroughly gripping read that shows off the maturation of the author's storytelling talents…Larsson effortlessly constructs an immensely complicated story line that owes less to the Silence of the Lambs horror genre than to something by John le Carre.... Cutting nimbly from one story line to another, Larsson does an expert job of pumping up suspense while credibly evoking the disparate worlds his characters inhabit.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Salander is a magnificent creation: a feminist avenging angel.... I cannot think of another modern writer who so successfully turns his politics away from a preachy manifesto and into a dynamic narrative device. Larsson's hatred of injustice will drive readers across the world through a three-volume novel and leave them regretting the final page; and regretting, even more, the early death of a mastery storyteller just as he was entering his prime.
Observer (UK)
[These are] extraordinary novels [with] astonishing impact... breakneck plotting, sympathetic characterization and the kind of startling denouements that occur more frequently than is conventionally considered possible. There is a comparison with that other great work of contemporary entertainment, The Wire, in the rage and clarity with which injustice becomes the driver of a novel way of looking at a society. Be warned: the trilogy...is seriously addictive.
Guardian (UK)
Fans will not be disappointed: this is another roller-coaster ride that keeps you reading far too late into the night. Intricate but flawlessly plotted, it has complex characters as well as a satisfying, clear moral thrust.
Evening Standard (UK)
The exhilarating conclusion to bestseller Larsson's Millennium trilogy (after The Girl Who Played with Fire) finds Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant computer hacker who was shot in the head in the final pages of Fire, alive, though still the prime suspect in three murders in Stockholm. While she convalesces under armed guard, journalist Mikael Blomkvist works to unravel the decades-old coverup surrounding the man who shot Salander: her father, Alexander Zalachenko, a Soviet intelligence defector and longtime secret asset to Säpo, Sweden's security police. Estranged throughout The Girl Who Played with Fire, Blomkvist and Salander communicate primarily online, but their lack of physical interaction in no way diminishes the intensity of their unconventional relationship. Though Larsson (1954–2004) tends toward narrative excess, his was an undeniably powerful voice in crime fiction that will be sorely missed.
Publishers Weekly
[Larsson] is remarkably agile at keeping multiple balls in the air. But it wouldn’t really matter if he weren’t a skilled craftsman because Salander is such a bravura heroine—steel will and piercing intelligence veiling a heartbreaking vulnerability—that we’d willingly follow her through any bramble bush of a plot.... There are few characters as formidable as Lisbeth Salander in contemporary fiction of any kind. She will be sorely missed. —Bill Ot
Booklist
Lisbeth Salander is in big trouble. Again. In the third installment of the late journalist Larsson's unpretty expose of all that is rotten in Sweden, Lisbeth meets her father, who, we learned a couple of books back, is not just her sire but also her mortal enemy. Pater shares her sentiments, so much so that, at the beginning of this trilogy-closer—though there's talk that a fourth Salander novel has been found on Larsson's laptop and is being squabbled over in lawyers' offices—he's apparently tried to exterminate the fruit of his loins. Being the resourceful lass that she is, Lisbeth rises from the grave to take her vengeance. Or, as longtime Larsson hero/alter ego Mikael Blomkvist tells us, she somehow managed to "get back to the farm and swung an axe into Zalachenko's skull." Adds Blomkvist, helpfully, "She can be a moody bitch." So she can, but that's the manner of avenging angels, and Lisbeth has lots of avenging to do. She also has lots of help. Blomkvist, a little mystified as always, runs on the sidelines along with girlfriend and publisher Erika Berger, while some favorite figures from the first installment, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, return to do their bit, among them fellow uberhacker Plague, who still hasn't taken a shower nearly 1,000 pages later. There are some new or hitherto minor players along for the ride, including another Zalachenko creation, a German very-bad-guy named Niedermann, who covers his tracks pretty well. Writes Larsson, "The problem with Niedermann was that he had no friends, no girlfriend and no listed cell phone, and he had never been in prison," which makes life difficult even for a master tracker-downer such as Lisbeth—whom, unhappily, Niedermann is trying to do in as well. It's a delicious mayhem, where no man is quite good and no rich person has the slightest chance of entering the kingdom of heaven. Oh, there are lots of very bad bikers, too. Patented Larsson, meaning fast-paced enough to make those Jason Bourne films seem like Regency dramas.
Kirkus Reviews