My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A word of warning– the Millennium Series isn’t one you want to read out of order, and you may not want to read this review if you haven’t read the earlier books. The very existence of this book is a minor spoiler for the second in the series.
I’m going to miss these characters, now that I’ve finished this book, the last in the series.
For some reason, this book got off to a slow start for me, which didn’t happen with the previous books. I didn’t dislike it, but it didn’t compel me to keep going as much as I expected.
I think not having an unknown bad guy and Salander being out of action due to her injuries from the end of the previous book weighed the story down– it felt more like logistics (interesting ones) than a mystery.
As the book progressed, the plots deepened, Salander got back in the game in spite of being arrested, isolated, and having a hole in her head, I got pulled back into the lives of all the characters, and the story became as compelling as ever.
Hornet’s Nest has a somewhat different flavor from the previous two books. There’s international intrigue which was introduced in the second book, but grows deeper and more political here, and there’s the added dimension of a courtroom drama.
On the other hand, there’s still the hunt for the big news story, lots of excitement, drama, violence, and the computer hacking that played a part in the previous books.
Mikael Blomkvist still gets on my nerves at times, particularly when all the women in the book are falling in love with him, but it isn’t a big problem, and the other characters (and most of the other aspects of Blomkvist) are interesting and well put together.
If you’ve read the other books, you’ll want to continue with this one.
Audio notes
I’ve listened to the audio version of all 3 books in this series.
Narrator: Simon Vance does an excellent job with the narration, as with the previous books.
Audio vs. Paper: I don’t think anything is lost in the translation to audio, but I’m not sure anything is added either. Go with whatever version works best in your schedule.
