YMMV / Millennium Series

• Angst? What Angst?: Played with in Lisbeth's case. On the one hand, she has been deeply marked by her terrible childhood experiences, but on the other hand, this has made her pretty much impervious to any later trauma. Her reaction to being brutally raped and tortured for an entire night is to very calmly get revenge, and then move on without any sign of being hurt by it. Her reaction to being shot in the head and buried alive is likewise to get revenge, and then function pretty much exactly as she has always done.
• Broken Base:
  • The Larsson books or Post-Larsson books. Either you're okay with the series continuing and trying to fulfill Larrson's idea of ten books within the series or you find it a complete middle finger that Larsson's family decided to continue the series and disregard the fact his partner, Eva Gabrielsson should be a part of Larsson's estate (as she owns the last of the planned manuscripts Larsson had written before his death) due to the two never being married, as both Larsson and Gabrielsson did intentionally to avoid being tracked due to their anti-fascist work.
  • And regardless of your thoughts on whether or not you were okay with the series continuing, The Girl in the Spider's Web was met with mixed reviews. Some enjoyed the plot and characters and were warmly receptive of it as a continuation of the series, while others found that the writing and plot failed to live up to Larsson's and flanderized both Lisbeth and Blomkvist.
• Captain Obvious Aesop: Human trafficking is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Rapists are bad. So are Nazis. Nazi rapists are even worse. Pedophiles aren't so hot either. Of course, the point is equally that the common perception that these issues are largely dealt with is completely wrong.
• Complete Monster:
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo:
    • Martin Vanger is a polite, charming CEO who uses his position in society to cover up the fact that he is a Serial Killer and rapist of women, kidnapping them and spending days raping and torturing them before ending their lives. Martin has been committing his atrocities for decades, and his victim count handily reaches into the hundreds. Even worse is the reveal that Martin was raised to be a killer by his equally repulsive father, Gottfried, and though potentially tragic, it is made explicitly clear that Martin just enjoys raping and killing, made all the more obvious by turning his own sister into his personal sex and torture slave after his father is out of the picture. Martin tries to subject Mikael Blomkvist to the same torments of his previous victims in the end, and simply excuses his crimes by proclaiming it is his hobby and he is living a "complete life".
    • Gottfried Vanger is a fanatical Nazi with an obsession for mimicking and mocking the Bible. Gottfried murdered more than 6 women in horrific ways resembling punishments from the Book of Leviticus, always subjecting them to brutal rape and torture beforehand. Be it by bashing their skulls in or raping them to death with farming tools, Gottfried perpetrated his acts with zeal, and took his own personal sadism to such a level that he sexually abused his own son and daughter, helping the former—Martin—realize his love for killing while turning the latter—Harriet—into his toy to be tortured until he finally tired of this and attempted to murder her.
  • The Girl Who Played with Fire & The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: Alexander "Zala" Zalachenko is a Russian agent who took refuge in Sweden. Because of his high importance to the government, Zalachenko was allowed to do anything he wanted. His favorite activity was abusing his wife. He would often torture or beat her in front of their daughter. The last time, he beat her so bad he left her with severe brain damage, which resulted in his daughter, who we find out is Lisbeth, burning Zala alive in retribution. Surviving with hideous wounds, Zala became the leader of a powerful human trafficking ring where girls were forced into prostitution. Having many, many women sold into sex slavery or killed when their value diminished, Zala also had multiple murders committed by his nightmarishly powerful son, and when he found out his daughter's location, he spared no expense to murder anyone in his path to torture her to death himself.
• Ending Fatigue: A fairly common complaint about the first installment. After Harriet's murder is wrapped up, a lot of time is spent dealing with Blomkvist's and Salander's revenge against Wennerström.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: More than one fan expressed disappointment that Larsson asserts Lisbeth's feelings for Mikael are gone after the first novel, age gap and personality divide be damned, and find their respective Official Couple partners forgettable or undercooked. As Spider's Web makes these partners disappear and ends with Lisbeth going to Mikael's apartment (to renew their friendship), shippers tend to view it with romantic undertones.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the first book, there are frequent references to how Blomkvist is out of shape and not a young man anymore, and how he needs to start taking care of himself. Blomkvist was, of course, an Author Avatar of Stieg Larsson, who would end up dying around the same age, due to years of not taking care of his health.
  • While, regrettably, parental sexual abuse has always existed, the idea of (well-off) men molesting their children secretly for years while appearing as wholesome and proper citizens and even creating dedicated rape dungeons has been seen as something too horrific to be true. The 2008 Fritzl case and other such crimes that recently came to light have changed that perception.
  • At the beginning of Hornet's Nest, Blomkvist says that he is going to talk with Dag and Mia's families about the publication of Dag's books, to get their opinion. In Real Life Larsson's family was much less considerate about the manuscripts, publishing them without his partner's consent.
  • In the first book, Mikael wonders if he'll meet some typical local Conspiracy Theorist in Hedestad who's convinced that Säpo is involved in a mind control conspiracy. The next two books deal with an actual conspiracy within Säpo, even if it doesn't involve mind control.
• Iron Woobie: Lisbeth Salander.
• Jerkass Woobie: Despite all her attitude problems, there are times throughout the books when so much gets piled on her that you just want to give Lisbeth a big hug. Preferably when she's not holding a Taser.
• Magnificent Bitch: Lisbeth Salander is a reserved hacker who functions as a self-appointed avenger of the downtrodden and especially to victimized women. Utilizing her hacking skills for her job as an investigator, Lisbeth is also a ward of the state for perceived insanity and upon her beloved guardian's stroke, she is placed under the care of the sadistic Nils Bjurman who brutally rapes her. Trapping him with footage of the rape she had filmed, Lisbeth disables Bjurman and tattoos his chest to say he is a pervert and rapist before she is recruited by hero Mikael Blomqvist to investigate a 40-year-old mystery she helps unravel before bringing down both the depraved Martin Vanger and then infiltrating the bank of Blomqvist's enemy Wennestrom to expose his own crimes and criminal dealings. Later targeted by a government conspiracy and her evil father Zalachenko, Lisbeth is able to triumph, set up her old tormentors to face their just rewards and lures her evil half-brother into a trap to assure his assassination before finally achieving her own freedom.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • In Dragon Tattoo, Bjurman - who is Lisbeth's legal guardian and caretaker - crosses this line when he forces her to perform oral sex in exchange for the money she needs to replace her computer. And then longjumps even farther over it when he violently sodomizes, rapes and tortures her.
  • Even though he's trying to screw up Lisbeth's life, Fredrik Clinton crosses the line in Hornet's Nest when he arranges for Mikael to be murdered and framed for dealing drugs in an effort to destroy his credibility. Wadensjö even calls him on it, saying that Clinton will end up destroying The Section because of his actions.
• No Yay: Martin with Mikael.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: As mentioned above, the new trilogy by David Lagercrantz gets this treatment for those who didn't like it as well as the Stieg Larsson books.
• Seasonal Rot: Hornet's Nest is generally considered the weakest in the original trilogy, with the gripping action of the first two novels put aside and more ponderous legal drama taking the stage.
• Strangled by the Red String: In Hornet's Nest, Mikael and Monica each admit (separately) to Erika that "I think I'm in love with her/him". But despite this declaration, Mikael isn't sure if it's serious. Indeed, despite an obviously strong mutual attraction, there's really nothing to suggest this will be anything more substantial than the numerous flings he's gotten into throughout the trilogy.
• Strawman Has a Point: Teleborian may be a sadistic Smug Snake and a prolific pedophile, but he is correct- promiscuous sexual behavior is indeed a marker of sociopathy. It's not, in and of itself, enough for a diagnosis, but Lisbeth setting her dad on fire (even if he deserved it) didn't do her any favors as far as that goes, nor did her history of truancy and alcohol abuse or her evident (if justified) paranoia. He is ignorant of her torture of her (sexually abusive) legal guardian and her career as a world class cyber criminal, which is just as well for her because all in all he could make a pretty convincing case. She might not be a true sociopath, but she certainly displays many sociopathic traits.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The jacket blurb for Eye for an Eye plays up Lisbeth's attempts to protect Faria Kazi in prison, suggesting that the novel will be about the notoriously antisocial Salander forming an Odd Friendship with one of the abuse victims she so regularly disdains, which would actually be a significant piece of Character Development for her. In practice, the two women barely interact; she saves Faria from an assassination attempt, then arranges for Annika Gianni to take over as Faria's lawyer while she herself hunts down evidence to prove that Faria's crimes were committed in self-defense.
• Values Dissonance: From the Swedish perspective, a 16-year old is not really a child when it comes to having sex.

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