What readers think of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, plus links to write your own review.

If you want to read a book where you are thinking, "Holy crap, what's going to happen next?", this will fill the bill. Lizabeth Salander is a ball of fire, and you will find yourself rooting for her succeess and survival. You will be introduced to Swedish geography and taken to many locations in the Swedish countryside. There exists underlying themes of sexual violence and political corruption, but you can accept it as a starting premise, then get lost in the mystery, intrigue and adventure that Steig Larson masterfully weaves to maintain your attention and tell the story of Lizbeth Salander.

From a person that read 20 books last year, this was my first book of the year. I think the middle 300 pages are the best and the rest could have shorten a great deal. --a decisive editor, yes
However, even those pages were very predictable, I thought. Once we discovered it was a serial killer in the family, it wasn't that big of a surprise that the serial killer had been abused. Then the confrontation with the serial killer ended to abruptly. And I knew from the beginning she wasn't dead. Overall, boring and predictable compared to other books I've read. I don't think I could force myself to read another book like that. I skipped paragraphs in the last chapter and I NEVER do that.

The stilted writing, possibly the translation, is full of cliches,"cub reporter", and too many more to quote. The writer insists on advertising the computer hardware used by brand name and capacity details, which are out of date already. He seems to be trying to demonstrate that he is knows a lot about electronics. These are distractions to what might have been an interesting mystery. Character interactions are forced and artificial. The characters seem to be put in bed together to make it an adult book, The sex is described, not transmitted in the writing.

I guess I'll slog through the other "Girl" book because they were gifts. Maybe I'll return the unread one.

This book makes Stephen King look like Dostoevsky

After this... back to the classics.

I am amazed that this book is so popular but readily acknowledge that I am in a small minority, other people have recommended it and seem to think it a work of considerable merit. The "discoveries" were quite effective and moderately exciting. The novel deals with crude extremes instead of subtle characterisation. What characterisation there is seems two dimensional. Dialogue is mechanical and you would hardly be able to tell who was speaking if you took the speeches out of context. Instead the writer relies on clumsy visual clues (tattoos and piercings - radical). The spicier elements of the book manage to be both nasty AND dull. The translator may have a good deal for which to answer and the book badly needed a decisive editor. I realise the book is not a travelogue, but for a beautiful country Larsson was unable to convey an intriguing sense of place. Half a Hollywood screenplay is all it ever was. Conrad, Dickens Woolf and Austen can all rest easy.

It was so difficult to get into the book__-all that stuff about Blookvist...then a long boring story of a family, which went from one character to another and a disgusting ending, which I suspected all the time.

This was the most boring book I ever read. I don't understand why is is so popular. I am throwing it away.

Do editors even read the last third of any novel?

This is a book that cries out for a competent editor who would have had the back-bone to sit an author down and tell him frankly that he was losing credibility and focus.

There was such promise of a finely plotted and richly populated story as the novel began and moved to its midpoint. But as the novel progressed the light flickered and the plot vanished. We were left with the author rushing to three endings: one about the men who hate women, the second about what happened to the missing girl, and the third about revenge. Not one of these "stories" were connected to each other in a Believable Way. Improbable all.

A good editor would have helped clean up the focus.

A broken plot with poor characters (except for the Girl -- who is intriguing) but I will not be spending precious time reading the remainder of the series.

Speaking as a freshman in high school, I found this book to be very good. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has many dull parts that were a bit hard to get but the whole premise was intriguing and I couldn't wait to find out what happened. Before I read this book I had never really thought about the country of Sweden, it doesn't really crop up in the news, nor does it crop up in school work. So as I read this I was just amazed at the injustices that appeared. I'm not sure if they are realistic, but if they are then hopefully someone is doing something about them. All in all, this book, as well as the trilogy was great.