The Millenium Trilogy
Written by Stieg Larsson
Read by Simon Vance
The Millenium Trilogy consists (obviously) of three books, published in the U.S. as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. By way of background, the stories were written in the first few years of the last decade by Stieg Larsson, a Swedish magazine editor who tragically never lived to see their publication and amazing success, passing away in 2004 at the age of 50. The books have already been made into movies in Sweden, and Hollywood is planning their own version, to be released in 2011...currently rumored to star Daniel Craig and Natalie Portman. On the success of these 3 books, Larsson was the second-best-selling author in the world in 2008. So the books have clearly been extremely well received...and if you haven't heard of them already, plan to hear a lot more about them in the future.
The two main characters in the three stories are Lisbeth Salander, a girl in her mid-twenties who has suffered horrible abuse at the hands of her family and the government, and Mikael Blomkvist, a 40-something journalist. The stories are filled with intrigue, romance, violence, sex, action and misogyny (the first book was published in Sweden under the title "Men Who Hate Women")...but also with a good dose of recent Swedish governmental history, including a look at the overreaching power of unaccountable government. The first book revolves around the family of a powerful industrialist and his missing (and apparently dead or kidnapped) granddaughter. The second book follows an attempt to bust open a sex-trafficking ring that shuttles young girls between the former USSR and Sweden. And the third involves Salander being brought to trial on charges of trying to murder her father.
I have to say that this is one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in some time. I felt transported to Sweden and found myself looking up locations on Google Maps as I went along. In many ways, Larsson made Sweden feel much like America, and the characters were fully humanized. Salander has many offputting characteristics on the surface (as well as an impressive intellect and significant skills in both research and deductive powers), but you definitely feel for her and what she's been through. And Blomkvist, while quite the ladies' man, has an unflinching sense of loyalty and integrity...so he doesn't come off as a shallow loser, as he could have. The violence and sexual themes can be pretty harsh, so this is definitely only appropriate for an adult audience (and not even for some adults, I'm sure). But it's quite a ride...especially from a first-time novelist...long-winded and slow at times...but nonethless engaging and satsifying.
The narrator was a very pleasant discovery. I haven't heard Simon Vance's work before. He's a Brit who has relocated to America, and he was simply superb, both at the straight reading and at the voice characterizations. I did have to laugh at a couple of the voices, because they felt like a bit of a bad Dracula impersonation...but everything is based on something, and I'm sure these were based on a legitimate dialect. It's just that Dracula was my only reference point...so I chuckled out loud a few times. Until you've listened, it's difficult to appreciate Vance's heavy lifting here. Swedish names, street names and city names are very challenging...and they just roll off Vance's tongue...so what could have become a very difficult listen was made quite easy...even in a story with lots of characters and complicated plot lines.
All told, these three stories total nearly 50 hours of listening. Two thumbs up from me for a well-delivered, rollicking ride. If you choose to imbibe, I hope you enjoy them as well!