Kindling a Love for Hornets and Dragons

I finally broke down and read that blasted "dragon tattoo girl" book.  Everybody seems to have read it, and while I was hunkered down in the land of Young Adult Fiction, I missed that boat.  (See my post in Electric Child about the kinds of books I read...)   I recall the last time I missed the mania about a book--The DaVinci Code.  That's okay, better late than never. I like to know what everybody is reading.

Oh--major spoiler alert here, so if haven't read the first two "Millennium" books, don't read this.

Anyway, here are my thoughts as I start the third book of the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

1. This is clearly not the third book.  It's an extension of  the second book, which ended on a major cliffhanger.  C'mon--you just blasted a hole in the skull of our heroine, Lisbeth Salandar, and you claim that the book is actually finished?  That was merely the end of the second act.  But if you combine the two books, that's a whopping 1100+ pages, so I guess they had to break it up somewhere.

2.  Now that Salandar has been shot in the head, what will happen to her?
         Will she forget how to do math?  Certainly there have been hints--the bullet was lodged in the "math" center of her brain.  And when the doctor asked her to count to ten, she almost left out the number 3.
         Will she break down and actually tell the truth to the authorities, or is she going to refuse to talk the way she has in the past?
        Will she become a nice person?  I've seen this in a House episode. Some nice guy actually had a change of attitude and became a jerk when some medically strange thing happened to him.  Will this happen to Salandar?  Will she start to share her feelings with people?  I can almost see her sneer with disgust at the thought of "feelings."  Is that going to change?

3.  The "blonde giant" named Niedermann is now one of my favorite villains in any book I've read in the past 30 years, probably second to Lord Voldermort.  This guy is really really bad!  And really really twisted!   Psychotic!  Scary!  And kind of dumb!  I look forward to every scene he's in, although with a little trepidation.  Is he going to tear someone's head off this time?  I know he's not the villain-di-tutti-villains in the Millennium series--that distinction clearly goes to Alexander Zalachenko.  But still he is a wonderful villain to fear.

4.  Book two, The Girl Who Played with Fire, had many Empire Strikes Back moments.  'Nuff said on that.

So.  I'm reading these books on my son Santino's Kindle--his Christmas gift.  I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo fairly quickly and immediately downloaded the second book.  Then, while I was smack dab in the middle of the second book, Santino actually wanted his Kindle back to read Everlost by Neal Shusterman (my current favorite author).  How dare he!  I had to distract myself for a few hours while I waited for him to fall asleep so I could reclaim the Kindle.

Luckily, when I finished the second book, I was able to download the third book immediately because of that Kindle, and I could continue where I left off.  This book series was made for e-readers--instant gratification.  Right now, I'm 10% of the way through the book.  Kindles don't list pages, they list "locations" and percentages.  It's a little weird at first, but after awhile you get to know that a book with a location number of 10,000 is about 500 pages long.  The Hornet's Nest book has a location of about 12,000.  So I'll be in it for awhile.

Santino is at a friend's house now, so I've gotta go while I have claim to the Kindle.  Now let's see what happens next to Lisbeth Salandar!