The Girl Who Played With Fire is the follow up to classic Swedish crime thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The first book introduced readers to Millenium journalist, Mikael Blomkvist and hacker / researcher Lisbeth Salander. Together, the unlikely pairing managed to uncover the mystery behind the disappearance of a child decades prior. Mikael and Lisbeth also established an interesting relationship with each other in the process.
While the first book was more centered around Mikael Blomkvist, The Girl Who Played With Fire aims to flesh out Lisbeth Salander and expand on her personal story. Blomkvist is still a major part in the story’s progression, but if we consider the first book to be 60% Blomkvist and 40% Lisbeth, then The Girl Who Played With Fire flips that ratio completely.
The first half of this book is almost entirely dedicated to Lisbeth’s character progression. We get to learn more about her psychology, and the logic behind her actions. We begin to understand her more as a person, along with the situations that had an impact on her. But most importantly, we also get a build up to the incredible turn of events that occur around the half-way mark.
After breaking the Wennerström scandal wide open at the end of the first book, Blomkvist is working on another huge story that promises to expose key players in the sex-trafficking trade. But what we think is just a sub-plot ends up tying directly into another ongoing plot that involves Lisbeth Salander. And the way in which these plots connect is pulled off masterfully.
One thing about this book that may irk some, is that the first half focuses heavily on Lisbeth’s narrative. But after a plot twist halfway through the book that has everyone viewing her in a different light, it takes a while before we see her own narrative play out again. This may have some people thinking that it’s a cheap way to build tension, but personally, I enjoyed how Larsson was able to plant seeds of curiosity in the reader’s mind throughout the book.
If there’s one nitpick I have, it’s that I feel there are a couple mundane scenes that make this beast of a book even longer to get through. There are entire scenes focused around characters deciding how to spend their evening and what to eat. While it’s not a huge complaint, I do feel that scenes like this may turn off some readers who are eager to get through the story with no filler.
For a while, The Girl Who Played With Fire did seem like a book that was never ending. It took me an entire month to get through it at my pace. But despite its length, never can I say that there was a moment when I considered shelving the book. The book did enough in it’s first half to sell me on Lisbeth’s character so that I actually cared about her enough to see the story all the way through.
Even some of the book’s antagonists are given excellent attention to detail. And a few of the character introductions help build towards an interesting finale.
Some may question the plausibility of this book’s ending as it makes certain characters come off as somewhat superhuman. Readers who bank on their thrillers being grounded in reality, might begin to think they’re reading about characters with comic book attributes. But I personally believe these moments added an extra flare and gave the climax more edge.
After being told that The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest go hand in hand, I’m more excited to read the final book that came from author Stieg Larsson before his unfortunate death. But being that the third book is even bigger in size than the second, I’ll be holding off for a few months before I pick it up.
All in all, I believe that The Girl Who Played With fire deserves to be read by anyone who enjoyed the first book. While I feel like the first book was a more complete story, this sequel is more ambitious in its story telling. And it turns Lisbeth Salander from a cool sidekick into a captivating main character that you’ll want to see more of.
