I just finished reading the third and final version of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Series. You know…those “The Girl Who” books that are showing up everywhere these days and dominate best seller lists.
Should I admit to reading something like this? When I try to think of way to describe them, I keep thinking of Stephen King talking about how his mother categorized books he wanted to read as a child as “trash” and “bad trash.” She would let him read trash with her own criticisms attached, but she wouldn’t let him read bad trash.
I’d say these books could easily be called trash, but maybe not bad trash. They aren’t literary books. They’re just popular thrillers with all the violence and socially unacceptable behavior that implies. They do deal with some serious themes, though. Okay, they deal with one main serious theme that runs through all of the books. Men abuse women in more way than we can imagine and usually get away with it.
This series is as much an expose on the extent of the crimes committed against women as they are novels. That said, they are enjoyable reads, and I at least got enough out of them to keep reading to the end of book three.
I think the story of how the author died before these books…his debut novels…became so successful made reading them more compelling.
I also think the fact that the author died before the publication went through makes me more forgiving of them. Sometimes I was very absorbed in the story, and sometimes I was rolling my eyes. The number of illicit relationships carried on by the primary and most sympathetic characters particularly began to wear thin by the end of the last book.
I actually thought the last book was the weakest despite holding my attention the most because by that time I’d invested so much in the characters I had to find out how it all ended. However, while feeling total disgust that the writing had run so amok after sucking me in that far, I read two interesting facts online that changed my perspective on this.
One, Stieg Larsson died before he finished editing the last book. That explains so much. Two, he had planned more books to follow. So while I was disgusted that so much time was wasted introducing new characters rather than resolving all of the plot lines regarding old characters in the final book, it turns out Larsson didn’t know he was writing the final book.
It’s too bad we’ll never know what books four, five, six, and beyond would have been like.
