It's taken me more than a year. When I received my Kindle in the summer of 2010, one of the first books I purchased was The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson. It is the last of his Millennium Trilogy, and the only one of the series I had not yet read. And there it sat, waiting patiently, while I sampled and downloaded and borrowed lots of other books. Steig Larsson passed away in 2004 before his trilogy was published, and Hornet's Nest is his last completed novel. To read Hornet's Nest meant the end, forever, of Larsson's incredible writing.
Larsson's first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, continues to rock the publishing world. Despite being published posthumously, Dragon Tattoo spent months on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 48 million hard and digital copies worldwide. Now that the movie has come out, the series has seen another boost on the bestseller lists. There is good reason for all this popularity - the series is fabulous. Hornet's Nest lives up to the reputation of its predecessors, with plenty of action and a thoroughly satisfying ending filled with vengeance and justice for all.
As the trilogy's main character, Lisbeth Salandar is a kick-ass, hard-core heroine who is as dysfunctional as she is brilliant. The last book captures the true essence of Lisbeth, who manages to defeat the bad guys while confined to her hospital bed, recuperating from a bullet to the brain. As I finally started Hornet's Nest, it was a bittersweet experience - this young woman, who I had come to admire and know so well through Larsson's series, would never again grace the pages of another novel. I believe that had Larssson not passed away, Lisbeth would have risen again to battle evil and corruption, albeit in her own disturbing way.
Characters like Lisbeth Salandar come along once in ... well, a millennium. Thank you, Steig Larsson, for sharing your talent and imagination. You are truly missed.
