The Girl Who Played With Fire

I love a good ending, don't you?

Though I thoroughly enjoyed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I took my time before I read The Girl Who Played With Fire. For two reasons: the length, it comes in at over 700 pages; and the subject matter, I knew it would be a mystery/thriller and have a measure of violence about it. I also knew what kind of violence, so, I avoided it for a while. Recent developments in my life have afforded me some uninterrupted time for a couple weeks, so the length seemed like a non-issue and I decided this was the time to read it.

I'm glad I finally did and I don't know if I should have waited so long. The Girl Who Played With Fire had me hooked from the beginning.  I think I liked it better than the first book. There was character development, intrigue and action. I loved every twist and turn. Stieg Larsson created such a compelling character in Lisbeth Salander and also in Mikael Blomkvist. I liked Berger, Paulo Roberto, Mimmi, Erikkson, Modig, Bublanski, everyone. Admittedly, there are A LOT of characters, and since it's been so long since I read the first book, I had trouble remembering all of them. But I'm used to it... I read Stephen King, after all.

I liked that Larsson created not just a compelling story, but also takes one sensitive topics. I felt that he was not just using it as background to tell a tail, but he also expressed an opinion about them through his work. It gave me something more than just a fantastic story to connect too.

As with so many second books in a trilogy, this felt like a middle book. It didn't until the end. The final few pages created such a cliffhanger, a sense of urgency, I don't think I'll be waiting as long to read the final installment. If it wasn't for those scenes, if the ending was just a bit different, or if the book was just five pages longer, two pages, it could have been a complete story unto itself. This is the Millennium trilogy though, so that it ended that way didn't surprise me.

I'm excited to read The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest. That there is a third book, means I kind of know what's going to happen after that final scene. Part of me wants to keep going on about how much I enjoyed The Girl Who Played With Fire, but I should really just pick up the next book. If you haven't read these books yet, even if you don't like mystery/thrillers, I highly recommend them. It is the characters that make the Millennium books amazing.

The Shepherd

Ethan Cross’s The Shepherd left me disturbed. I’m hoping to write this review and then put this novel far, far out of my mind. The novel is what it promises on the front cover. It is a face-paced thriller. It’s action-packed chapter after chapter. The main characters, Marcus Williams and Francis Ackerman Jr. don’t get much opportunity to process what is happening to them. There is a lot of reaction and adaptation. During all that action, there is actual character development. Both Marcus and Ackerman learn more about themselves and of what they are capable. The way this book was going, I didn’t think that was going to happen, but as I saw it happening, it kept me interested in reading. This would likely be a good read for a thriller fan.

That being said, I’m not usually a reader of thrillers. I like books that are “thrilling” and have “mystery” to them, but thrillers as a sub-genre are not usually my speed, so I can’t say if The Shepherd is a good representation of them. I say all this because for the first third of the book, it was a struggle for me to get through. Before I even hit page 100, there were two things bothering me.

My first problem was with the language. Every other sentence seemed to be some kind of metaphor, especially metaphors for good and evil. Couldn’t the author say something plainly? There were many times I wanted to yell, get to the point! The people in the story keep saying that Ackerman is evil, or this action is evil and that action is good. I felt as though Cross wrote in black and white. I didn’t see a lot of shades of grey. (Unless the Sheriff is a grey area.) This book could be 50-100 pages shorter if all the flashy, flowery words were taken out.

The other aspect of the book that bothered me was the excessive violence. The author kept taking us into people’s homes only to have them brutally (and I mean brutally) murdered. For two thirds of the book it seemed like it was murder after murder. It wasn’t until 80 pages in that I felt like the author was actually trying to connect with the reader. Even then, the violence didn’t stop. I understand the part of the story that requires us to follow the serial killer until he’s caught or there’s a confrontation, but why do we need to go into the home of all his victims and follow his thought processes. It was just too detailed for me. It’s not that I shy away from books with a lot of death. I read Stephen King (Under the Dome as an example) so I’ve been with an author who gives us a full back story on a character and then kills them off. There was just something about Cross’s writing out the vicious serial killer’s murders and going into such detail that repulsed me. I might have finished this book earlier if I didn’t have to put it down and take my mind off of the killing so often. I didn’t want to keep reading it if every other chapter, I have to read about Ackerman or another character killing someone. For me, it was too much twisted death for one book.

One final thing that bothered me about The Shepherd (so there are actually three things) was the cover. Do you see it? It’s terrible. I understand the fire imagery, but the “small town” photo in the background with the fire all around is just bad. I would never pick up a cover that looked like that; it’s very unappealing. Who thought this up? (If I had read this a few weeks ago, it would have made my Top Ten Book Covers I Wish I Could Redesign list.)

In the end, however, there were some great twists. I didn’t really see the end coming. I did regarding Ackerman, but not with the Sheriff. Cross definitely provided us with a few surprises, which is very important. The end definitely saved the book for me. Marcus’s reaction to the finale was great too, though some of it was predictable. Cross wrote a good book, not great, definitely bloody, but good. Not for the squeamish either. If you’re a fan of the genre, you might want to pick this up.

Thanks to Pump Up Your Book book tours for providing my copy.

If you've review this book and would like to add your link, please let me know.