After reading the first book in Larsson's Millennium-trilogy in June, I read the next book these past weeks. Still in German (Verdammnis), for the same reason - that nobody seems to want to check those out from the library, unlike the Dutch and English copies. Reading these books in German goes suspiciously smooth, which I suspect reflects both my somewhat improved German compared to a few years ago, and the rather simple writing style of the author.

I'll refrain from saying too much about the plot to not spoil either this book or the previous one in the series. Suffice to say that, as has been pointed out before, the plot of this book (and the next one, I understand) is the main story of the trilogy, with the first book only serving to set up the characters and background. Our protagonists Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander return, with a far larger role and character development for Salander this time around, and conversely less for Blomkvist. A few other characters get some minimal character development - which ties in with what I would say is one of Larsson's largest problems.

He has the bad habit of doing - however modest - character development for characters that don't need it in the slightest as they're only there to help the plot anyway. Things that aren't in the least relevant to the plot of the books, or even to their relationship to the protagonists. What's worse is that this comes at the expense of further fleshing out the secondary characters that actually matter. In this novel, for instance, a team of nearly a dozen police officers and collaborators appears. Each member of the team gets one or a few PoVs and some bare-bones character development - but none of them gets enough to be much more than a caricature.

There are other things that are rather obviously - too obviously - superfluous in this novel and that one would think an editor should have cut. A character going to Ikea to buy furniture for a new place to live, sure, that's relevant information that the reader should be told even if Ikea and the furniture are not otherwise relevant. But a complete list of all the items bought, including the names of all the brands? And that's not the only time - almost every time a character goes out to buy food, we get the full shopping list, again including brand names. You'd almost think Larsson is doing product placement advertizing. He does the same thing with describing itineraries through Stockholm and the rest of Sweden, but that at least is somewhat interesting for people who know Stockholm.

In terms of pacing and plot movement, the book has the traditional difficulties of a middle book in a trilogy. I wouldn't say that it ever really gets boring or hard to get through, though. Certain scenes or even entire plotlines have a rather doubtful relevance to the overarching plotline, but fortunately contain enough character development to not be a total waste of space (okay, most of the time), and are still entertaining enough.

As the plot moves on, we - and Mikael Blomkvist - also find out more about Lisbeth's past, which is perhaps more interesting than the plot itself, though the two are naturally intertwined. As in the previous book, Larsson doesn't hide his political and social views, and his indignation at certain crimes and neglect or dubious attitudes from the establishment is clear. In one case - the prologue, those who have read the book will know what I mean - he does so in a way that I have to call rather tasteless (it would be a spoiler to elaborate).

In conclusion, The Girl Who Played With Fire is largely a book in the same vein of its predecessor. Since Lisbeth Salander's character is by far the most interesting of the series (one might even say, the only interesting one), this book's far larger focus on her is a good thing, and the intertwining of her past and the current plot is done rather well, in my opinion. The book isn't by any means high literature and has a few weaker aspects even compared to other books in the genre, but it's gripping and entertaining, I'd recommend it to anyone who liked the previous book and I look forward to reading the final volume in the series (even if I kind of have the impression that this book has moved the plot further than it should have as a penultimate book).