The book is approximately 600 pages long. I was engaged in the story for about 200 of them. It took the entire first half of the book to introduce the cast of characters and build the necessary background knowledge. That was some S.L.O.W. reading. The main characters didn't even meet one another until this halfway point.
The murder mystery portion of the story, while intriguing, only played out over 150 pages, or so. At this point in my reading, I became excited, and thought that maybe the book was worthwhile, after all. But then it seems as if mystery solved, action over- and I still have over 100 pages left to read. What could the author possibly talk about for another 100 pages??
The answer: not much. What played out in the end could have been summed up in 20 pages, rather than 120.
This book took me months to finish- which is not like me. However, I am really quite stubborn about abandoning a book once I've started it, even if I don't enjoy it. (Remember the Anna Karenina debacle? If you've forgotten, you can read about it here.) I powered through until the bitter end.
And I mean bitter. SO not worth it, in my opinion.
SO, if any of you readers have read and enjoyed this book, care to enlighten me? Because I feel as though I surely must have missed something! What is it about this book that is such a sensation??
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I was actually going to make a post about the entire series because I finished the last book the other day. I think I liked the second book better than the others. There were parts that were a little dry and I lost interest, but the parts that were good, were very good. I think the most uninteresting parts were when he droned on and on about finance in the beginning and then in later books describing the Swedish government structure. I just trudged through those parts to get to the good parts.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the other commenter. I liked the 2nd book a lot. I haven't read the 3rd yet though. Yes the 1st was slow but I enjoyed it knowing that i don't have to go through it all again to read the next 2 (hopefully).
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