Millennium – DaneCobain.com

Title: The Old Devils

Author: Kingsley Amis

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 384

Rating: 4*/5

Kingsley Amis – The Old Devils

I have mixed feelings about this book, but on the whole I have to say that I enjoyed this, even if it was a little tedious in places. The biggest problem was that it felt like nothing much really happened, although it did pick up towards the end once I felt a little more invested. But the characters weren’t particularly relatable, just the bog standard old boys club, and I felt like the book suffered a little because of its publication date. It won the Booker Prize in 1986, and it kind of feels too old to be modern and too modern to be a classic.

That’s the bad news taken care of. The good news is that other than that, it was pretty good. It basically follows what happens when a moderately famous Welshman decides to return to his old haunts and the ensuing chaos that’s caused. There are characters sleeping around and it can sometimes be difficult to follow, but it’s also eminently believable.

For me, I thought it was a little duller than some of the other stuff that I read, but I’m also glad that I’ve now read a Kingsley Amis book. I probably won’t read any more of his work unless I come across it at a charity shop, and that kind of sums up how I feel about this one. I’m glad I read it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it – and if I were you, I wouldn’t go out of the way to get it.

Kingsley Amis

That’s about all I can think to say about it, but I still have another hundred words or so to fill out with my review because of the rule I have where I write one word for every page in the book. It probably would have helped both my review and the book itself if it was a little shorter, but perhaps that’s just because I’ve grown so used to reading shorter books from the new millennium.

Amis has something in his style that’s reminiscent of Graham Greene, but I’d rather read Greene if I was given the choice. Either is pretty solid, though. Up to you.

Kingsley Amis Quote

Click here to buy The Old Devils.

Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest | Review

Title: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest

Author: Stieg Larsson

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 602

Rating: 9/10

Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest

This book is the third and final book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and so before I get into it, I should explain that I’m assuming that you’ve read the other books. If you haven’t, stop reading this and go and pick them up. Interestingly enough, the first book works well as a standalone, but the second and third books are so interlinked that really, you need to read one after another.

In this book, we catch up with Lizbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist again, as Lizbeth faces a long recovery and a trial for her part in the assault of Zalachenko. Now, if you’ve read the second book then you’ll know all about this; if you haven’t, I suggest you read it first, because you’ll be able to see how it all wraps together.

It’s interesting to note that, yet again, the two protagonists don’t really come in contact, although they do find an ingenious method of communication. In this book, Salander and Blomkvist are working together, and whilst they don’t get to meet up with each other, they do work together in an exciting campaign that uses both of their skills to their best effect to shake the very government that screwed Salander over.

Stieg Larsson

As you might expect with Larsson’s work, there are plenty of twists and turns along the way, and the plot keeps you guessing right up until the end, when there’s one last twist which seems to wrap everything up nicely, although I can’t help but wonder what might have happened next, had Larsson lived to write further books in the series. Unfortunately, though, he died shortly after delivering the manuscripts for the trilogy to his publisher.

In all fairness, the only thing that wasn’t satisfactorily dealt with was Salander’s missing sister, who no-one seems able to locate. She hasn’t played a prominent part in the story line, but she’s been referred to a couple of times, and I was half-suspecting one final twist as far as she was concerned. I almost thought that it would turn out that she didn’t exist at all, and that Salander had created her so that after the tumultuous events of the trilogy, she could adopt her sister’s character and disappear from the limelight.

Now that I’ve finished reading this, I feel almost at a loss – it was a fantastic trilogy, and it felt to me as though each of the books was even better than the last. The characterisation was fantastic, the characters were believable and acted consistently, and the story line was as in-depth and as exciting as usual. In fact, I can’t fault it – I can’t think of any ways in which the book could have been improved.

Quote About Stieg Larsson

That said, it was a long old read, and you’ll need a certain amount of dedication if you want to get through it. My copy was 600 pages long, but it was also a big book with relatively small print, and it got kind of heavy if you tried to read it too long. It’s also difficult to ascertain how much of the quality is due to Larsson’s original writing, and how much of it was due to the skills of his translator.

All in all, though, this book comes heartily recommended from me, although like I said, I think you’re best off if you read the entire trilogy, in order. If you can put in the time, it’s well worth it.