Kim - reviewed on 1/19/2012 + 40 more book reviews

If you read the first book, Sun Storm, and didn't like the thing that happened to the dog, you will -not- want to read this one. There is quite a bit more needless description of a variety of animals being abused or killed and a certain point of Swedish law presented in the course of these descriptions will only serve to further enrage animal lovers. Of course, if you believe that animals are just animals and find the human murders and abuses more upsetting, I think you may be disappointed too. This time, I felt almost nothing for the murder which is the focus of the story. None of the potential murderers was, I felt, in-depth enough to care about, and there were so many that I quickly lost track of who was who. In addition, the murdered women herself raised no sympathy in me or most of the characters around her. The issues of misogyny and patriarchal predominance in the Church as well as the conflict between hunters' rights and the need for ecological conservation are prominent and hold the most emotional charge. A rather unimportant, needless, and cliched side story (which also gets entangled in the animal cruelty issues) brings in the sexual relationship between two women, one of whom is perceived to be a man-hater in a loveless, sexless marriage with a man, and the other who is your standard negatively-drawn lesbian-in-development who doesn't dress like a typical woman, whose hair is cut like a man's, and who was sexually abused as a child by a male family member (which of course we realize is the basis of her current lesbian longings). These two women are presented as somewhat emotionally unstable as one uses sex to get the other to do something for her politically and the other, upon losing her lover, takes it out on her animals and then takes it out on herself. What I -did- take away from this book is that Swedish culture is not any more enlightened than American culture despite significant differences in access to healthcare, education, labor rights, unemployment insurance, public spending, and parental (maternity) leave which most Americans, if told, would think is simply a gross exaggeration meant to make them look foolish. The more things change the more they stay the same, so the saying goes. I will not be reading more by this author mainly due to the frequent focus on and references to animal abuse and killing.

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