sarahxify's Reviews (703)

This wrapped up well considering that Larsson didn't actually intend for it to be the last book of this series. I absolutely love these books. Larsson's overly detailed and descriptive way of writing would normally bother me, but for some reason he gets away with it and I find it fascinating. I don't know why I am so happy to know how many coffees a character has throughout the course of the day, or what Lisbet had on her sandwich, but I am. These books are seriously good - disturbing, complicated, fascinating. I love them and I wish he had had the chance to finish this series.

This was a reread for me. I didn't particularly enjoy it the first time round but really liked it this time.

Tolkien's world building is amazing - it's so thorough and well done. The only thing that stops me from giving this five stars is that his writing style annoys me; I find it overly descriptive and laborious. Aside from this, the man really is a genius.

The only real downfall to this book, for me, was the POVs. I thought there were too many (i.e. Florian and Joana's stories were basically the same) that some characters (like Alfred) were featured too often. Because of the amount of POVs and frequency at which they changed, I found it quite difficult to warm to the characters or work out what was happening to each of them individually at the beginning.

Once I got around that and got more into the book, I loved it. I really like historical fiction, especially when it's like this book: a true event retold with fictional characters. I appreciated the way the author chose to retell an event isn't widely known. It is well worth the read.