The Millennium Trilogy

The past fourteen days of my boring life have been very busy. I was preoccupied during the night on weekdays and almost the whole day every weekend by my readings. I have read a number of praises and hypes about this series before but I cannot bring myself to buy it because I was afraid that I will get bored of it. I do get bored easily of novels that are too long and sometimes I find the flow very redundant and sometimes it feels like the author just prolongs it for the sake of prolonging it. After more than a year of preventing myself from buying it, I gave in when they released the complete set bundle of this. I thought this is just a trilogy so hopefully the author will not bore me to death with these three installments. And this is how The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson made me unavailable and locked up in my own universe for the last fourteen days.

I started with the first book with much skepticism (all of the books are very thick that I doubted that it will not bore the hell out of me). True enough, after reading the first few pages of the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I thought I won’t be able to finish the whole trilogy, let alone finish the first book. But when the book for the very first time introduced Lisbeth Salander into the story, it has managed to cling itself to me since. As I progress through the book, I thought “wow, no wonder this created so much hype”. It was absolutely entertaining and it just won’t let me go. I can read for hours and hours, in fact I have been sleeping way past my bedtime while reading this and I don’t get bored. The moment I finished it, I got worried. I was worried that the second book will finally meet my expectation of being boring and redundant. I was worried that the story will finally lose my excitement and become predictable. And yet I decided to continue with the second book right after the first book.

The Girl Who Played with Fire was really the heart of the trilogy. It demonstrated the real Lisbeth Salander. It speaks of her life, most especially, it speaks of her past. I think the second book reveals Lisbeth Salander’s core. It will make you sympathize with her and understand why she became how she is now. It makes you feel Lisbeth, makes you feel such intimacy that it is as if you are living her life instead. It makes you feel that you can reach out to her and she will feel you. One thing that I really appreciate is that when Lisbeth was blamed by the authorities of the murders, the story was written in a way that it did not make me frustrated and angry that Lisbeth is being blamed and framed-up. I have the tendency to be very affected, very frustrated every time I read or watch something wherein the character was framed-up and people scrutinize her and blame her to the point that I just want to scream that he or she is in fact innocent. But here, I never felt that frustration. I think it is because Lisbeth was created as intelligent as she can be. The story was also created intelligently and was not made to plow on your emotions alone. In fact, it will entertain you. It is also in this installment that I “fell in love” with Lisbeth Salander. Every day, I would be so excited to come home so that I can continue reading. It is as if I am coming home to her. I was obsessed with Lisbeth I admit; BUT do not think that I am a lesbian. I merely enjoy Lisbeth’s company. I admire her.

The last of the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is what I liked the least. I thought that the “history” part, the one that explains “The Section” and the important members of it is quite too long. For one, I do not know Swedish government and their history. I also do not have any knowledge whatsoever of their politics. And there are few pages dedicated to these elements and I loathed it. I kind of just doze away while reading these. But naturally when the story came around to Lisbeth, it got my full attention again. Another thing that I would like to change if I would have a say about this is the affair of Figuerola and Blomkvist. Well, for me, like every character in the story, I have already accepted Erika and Mikael’s relationship but I cannot accept the affair with Monica. Secretly, I have been hoping that Lisbeth and Mikael will end up together. The reason is actually very simple, Mikael has been helping Lisbeth with her cases and he has already gone too far as a friend to Lisbeth and Lisbeth on the other hand have been alone for too long, albeit her own decision but her relationship with Mikael if I may say, is special. They belong together actually. Both of them will go out of their way just to help the other and they can’t just leave each other alone. I also love it that in this last installment all of the very few people who believed in Lisbeth’s innocence did their everything to help her. For all I know, this is the only time since she was locked up that anybody has treated her as a human again, except for Holger and Dragan who gave her chance to live her own life and gave her space in the society. My favorite part in this installment though is the court trial. I love how the "ice-queen" smothered the prosecutor with equally cold answers.

All in all, I love the trilogy and it is a shame that Stieg will never have another opportunity to create such a splendid series again. Lisbeth really got a very good grip on me. She managed to arouse my curiosity and filled me with compassion.

As what I used to post in my Facebook account:

I ♡ Lisbeth Salander