By Slanted Light

I know! And you know, I was really expecting to like it, I really liked the sound of what you said about it... I like the idea of a wider view of a nation and its corruptions - I guess I just don't take it in as well if it's explained to me, as I do if I'm shown it in sweeping colours and tears and sighs...

I didn't mind Salander, to be honest I don't have much expectation of her at the moment - I think she's going to fall exactly where I expect her to fall, rather than surprising me with unexpected humanity... Maybe she won't, maybe I'm totally wrong, but that's the impression Larsson's given me so far...

Interesting about the translator - I did wonder if that might have something to do with it, except that it seems to have had as much adulation in the translation as it presumably did in the original...

Swedish crime fiction, though, is never what you'd call sprightly and a laugh a minute
Heeee! See, that's totally not what I was expecting. I adore dark, melancholic fic, and slow atmospheric fic - stories where you can wade through the emotion... and that doesn't mean that the emotions have to be described in great swathes of words, or detail, but... I've got to be able to feel it... I'm just not feeling Larsson, even though I want to! Or... maybe what I'm feeling is so even, as Jojo said above, that it's just not moving me as I want a story to move me...

Come to think of it, I'm absolutely the same with fanfic - I don't care if a story is clever, or a plot idea is shiny new and twist-y - I want to be moved by it...

I'm quite curious to read something by another Swedish author though, just to see if it's a cultural view thing, or specific to Larsson... Interestingly enough, I can absolutely imagine this made into a Hollywood blockbuster, a la The Pelican Brief etc....