[Tichy]

While I didn't care so much for the violence, I thoroughly enjoyed the novels. I thought they had a comparatively unusual plot and unusual characters. They are definitely much better written than, say, Dan Brown novels.

Funny to see the the NYT complain about 12 page long boring descriptions. Surely any regular reader of the NYT should have no problems to cope with those.

Also that article just quotes things out of context to make them sound silly.

[mzl]

Funny, I place Stieg Larsson and Dan Brown in the same section: writers who are good at constructing a compelling story, but not so good in actually writing it down.

With Stieg Larsson, I got really annoyed with the amount of boring expositions, pseudo-cliffhangers at the end of every other chapter, overuse of clichés ("and then they talked for X hours"), etc.. It reads like a very rough draft of a book, not as an edited text ready for publication.

That said, I've read both authors and enjoyed the books. I just feel that they could have been so much better with some serious rewrites (as apparently the English translation of Stieg Larsson had, I have to check that one out).

[dagw]

It reads like a very rough draft of a book

Given that Larsson died before the final edits where completed, that is probably a quite accurate description.

[mzl]

I suspect the same. I've considered reading the one of the books in English also just to see if they are improved. I found Dan Brown to be slightly less annoying in Swedish than in English, since some parts had been cleaned up.

[Tichy]

Maybe the roughness was part of the charm for me. It gives it more of a reality feel. But also, I guess I am not that critical a reader, I care more for ideas than presentation.

[mzl]

I enjoyed the books for their ideas also. The fact that the presentation is flawed is unfortunately a hindrance that breaks the spell ("oh no, not that trope once again"). On the other hand, some authors are so good at the presentation that their writing also breaks the spell, but for the reason that I want to stop and admire it. The latter is a less hurtful problem of course :)