This is simply a book that couldn’t be filmed. Not because of ?special effects or anything, but simply because of the tons of inner dialogues. This film is more or less a series of bland characters walking around in a bland background with a too simple storyline that doesn’t pay off until the very end. Although this ending is well-made and clever, it’s simply not worth two hours of bore before that.?

Unfortunately, I kind of expected more of the ending. What begins as a wonderful story of a lunatic girl who just doesn’t suit her own time, turns into the story that has been told too many times: Child of our time finds a gate into another world, who has choosen him/her as the one with ancient prophecies, and although our hero first hesitates, he/she finds courage, saves the kingdom and returns home with this newfound character. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland simply falls a little too much as The Matrix meets Narnia, and although these are all great stories, he could have pulled something better off.

One final praise must go to Mia Wasikowska – this unknown but wonderful actress who simply is the perfect Alice – naïve, dreamy, and really cute. And managing being so childlike even though her boobs just almost shows in every scenes (due to her clothes being to big) is just amazing.

Den sista tredjedelen var bättre än resten av boken tillsammans upphöjt till tjugo. Jag läste i en annan recension online att början var för seg och att när boken väl kom igång var den riktigt bra – men då var den nästan slut. Det stämmer delvis. Men personen i fråga tyckte också att Larsson lika gärna kunnat klippa bort stora delar av första halvan. Det stämmer inte. Slutet skulle inte alls vara lika bra utan den långa utvecklingen som ledde till den, precis som att finalen på en bra symfoni inte fungerar utan en overtyr. Många overtyrer, liksom många böcker, är dock alldeles för långa, men det tyckte jag inte alls var fallet med Män som hatar kvinnor. Trots att språket ofta fungerade ganska monotont, nästan som en rapport snarare än roman, så skrevs det ändå intressant, och jag rycktes ändå in i berättelsen och var intresserad även när knappt någonting hände.

Att välja en favoritscen är jättesvårt. Män som hatar kvinnor är inte en bok som kan delas in i kapitel med olika speciella händelser – visst kan den kanske delas in i tre akter (Mikael arbetar ensam, Mikael arbetar med Lisbeth, de kommer brottslingen på spåren) men boken i helhet är egentlligen inte direkt uppdelad utan mycket realistisk; ibland följer de helt fel spår i veckor innan de vänder, i stycken av boken man helt enkelt kunnat hoppa över om man ville. Två av de mest upphöjda scenerna är dock när Lisbeth misshandlar och tvångstatuerar sin vårdnadshavare som straff för våldtäkten han begick mot henne; och slutscenen när Mikael är i mördarens (inga spoilers här inte) källare, nära att dö. Båda dessa scener är ovanligt extrema för boken, som annars är relativt lugn och fri från blod och våld. Speciellt Lisbeths scen är skrämmande på det sättet att den visar inte ondskan i en fiende utan hos huvudkaraktären – att faktiskt huvudpersonen, den “goda”, gör någonting sådant. Och just denna scen upplyser ett av teman i boken, nämligen att ett öga går för ett öga. Trots att Stieg Larsson inte direkt går ut med sin egna åsikt på ämnet visas tydligt vad Lisbeth, som lidit genom hela sitt liv på grund av idiot efter psykopat, tycker. Det är intressant att se en verkligt bra blandning av svag och stark karaktär i Lisbeth, där hon dels är stark nog att försvara sig själv och stå för sina åsikter, men också svag nog att inte kunna behärska sina känslor.

Jag kommer definitvt att läsa de nästföljande böckerna i serien… när jag får tid. Just nu gäller Stephen Kings senaste, Under the Dome.

This is what I concider the golden age of symphonic metal. Right here, right now. It is a genre that develop well on its own as well as into other genres – Leaves’ Eyes blend it perfectly with folk music (Njord of 2009 for example) and Sonata Arctica earlier this fall released The Days of Grays which was the first album that really showed a mixture of power, prog and symphonic metal without one taking the overly control.

A certain cliff in the history of symphonic metal was released only a month ago… Epica‘s Design Your Universe is the album I will speak of today.

This phenomenal, epic, melodic, bombastic album kicks of with their best instrumental yet, the intro song Samadhi ~ Prelude ~, before entering Resign to Surrender ~ A New Age Dawns – part IV ~. DYU is the first album to continue the A New Age Dawns saga, first started on the 2005 album Consign to Oblivion. The first three parts told of the collapse of the Mayan civilization, and this 2009 release show the next three parts. To me, Resign to Surrender sounds like an amazing intro song, the perfect way to reawaken the saga in. It builds up perfectly, before finishing and leaving the scene for the next song (and the first video for the album), Unleashed. Unleashed is far from the best song of the album, but I understand they used it as a video. It is a real catchy song, and Simone sounds amazing in it. I can’t see why it’s their most popular on Last.fm, but still a great track.

The fourth song on the album is Martyr of the Free Word, and here I must speak my mind. Why, oh why, couldn’t this be the third song? I would much prefer it to be ahead of Unleashed, simply because Unleashed is a bit too grande and bombastic, whilst Martyr is more of a metal song. Resign to Surrender followed by Unleashed just doesn’t sound as good as followed by Martyr of the Free Word. This aside, it’s a really cool track, one of the more special on the album, with influences from oriental music in the vocal lines. Mark Jansen’s grunts right after the chorus really is an amazing part that does the song.

The next song is another more bombastic one – Our Destiny. I’m sad to say this is one of the weaker songs on the album, if I have to choose one. It is a great song, but compared to the rest of the album it’s kind of dull. The thing is that it’s too long… it’s only 6 minutes, not much to Epica standards, but I feel it’s a little too much. If it were to be cut down into at least 4:40, 5, it would be much higher in my ratings.

Kingdom of Heaven ~ A New Age Dawns – part V ~ is the fifth chapter of the A New Age Dawns saga, and the longest song on the album at 13:35. It is an awesome track, especially the first eight minutes, but it’s still a disappointment to me. Maybe I had too high hopes – before I heard it I saw an interview with Mark Jansen explaining how he had worked on the song for three years, and how he considered it their best by far. To me it’s pretty low on the list of top tracks on DYU, after the title track, Martyr of the Free Word, Burn to a Cinder, and Resign to Surrender. As with Our Destiny, maybe this song would be much better if it were to be cut down, maybe with as much as three or four minutes. Another remark is the spoken parts in the second half of the song… I don’t mind cheese, in fact I order a triple cheese sandwich listening to Stratovarius and Rhapsody of Fire, but these spoken parts really shift the song from epic to humorous, not a completely reparable damage I’m afraid.

After an epic song like Kingdom of Heaven, it’s often tough to hear another song right away. Many bands solve this problem with either putting an easier rock song right after (Nightwish‘s The Poet and the Pendulum was followed by Bye Bye Beautiful), or the epic song is the final track on the album. The dilemma here is how there are two epic songs, Kingdom of Heaven as well as the title track, which is put as the final song (a perfect choice, more of that later). So the choice was to have an interlude as the seventh track, entitled The Price of Freedom ~ Interlude ~, a clip of people speaking of the price of freedom being death and orchestral music in the background resembling of many horror pictures from the 1920′s.

The interlude leads elegantly into Burn to a Cinder, one of my favorites on the album. It is one of the more melodic songs, going back to the power metal territories of Consign to Oblivion and The Phantom Agony. The song ends with an epic moment leading into deep sorrow (“Why can’t I bleed with you?”) followed by the album’s first ballad, the moving Tides of Time.

To me, both Deconstruct and Semblance of Liberty are pretty standard symph metal songs – no big surprises, catchy choruses, nothing really special except for the speaking part in Semblance of Liberty (“Read… my… lips”).

The second ballad of the album is also the weakest song Epica has ever made. I was glad when they announced that Tony Kakko of Sonata Arctica would guest feature on the song White Waters, but this doesn’t feel like Tony at all. All Tony touches turns to gold, but this is as far from gold as you could get. White Waters is not beautiful, it is boring and weird, and the only thing that saves it is that Semblance of Liberty leading into the final track of the album would be very weird. And the final track is gold.

Design Your Universe ~ A New Age Dawns – part VI ~ is the best song Epica has ever written, and that’s final. It is just perfect, from it’s epic chorus (“We can’t undo what we have done, so show us now what we’ve become”) to its final, heartbreaking, whispering verse that always makes me weep.

This is Epica’s best release to date, and I’m really excited if they will ever top it, because let’s face it…. this is the latest chapter in the history of awesome music.

Så är inte fallet med Män som hatar kvinnor. Att den ens var en kriminalroman var inte något jag noterade speciellt förrän 200 sidor in, när lösningen av fallet Harriet satte igång ordentligt. Boken är fylld av mindre karaktärer och bihistorier, och det älskar jag både med literatur, film och musik; alltid händer något, alltid kommer någonting nytt in i bilden och alltid vill man läsa vidare även om man kanske inte älskar grundhistorien. Boken är speciellt upplagd för att följa två historier: Mikael Blomkvist som ska lösa fallet Harriet, och 23-åriga problembarnet Lisbeth Salander som spanar in Mikaels arbete på avstånd, samtidigt som hon försöker hantera sin nya målsman efter att den föregående fick en hjärnblödning.

Ännu en sak jag generellt ogillar med kriminalromaner är förvirrningen i en massa olika namn. Därför är det också bra när författaren ger de olika misstänkta klara personligheter, som Agatha Christie gör i till exempel Mordet på Orientexpressen eller Tio små negerpojkar. På sätt och vis missas detta helt i Män som hatar kvinnor, men inte fullständigt; det är förvirrande att en oerhörd mängd misstänkta nämns och beskrivs och det är mycket svårt att hålla dem isär, men samtidigt berättas hur Mikael erfarar samma problem. Är det kanske meningen att det ska vara svårt, för att illustrera hur han känner? Med Stieg Larsson död är det omöjligt att veta säkert, men jag anar det.

To me, Sonata Arctica has always been the power metal band. They were, together with Nightwish and Within Temptation, what brought me into both heavy metal music and classical music in circa 2005 – 2006. Since then, I have heard literary hundreds, if not thousands, of bands. Among these are Stratovarius and Helloween, two of the first power metal bands in the 1980′s and onwards. When I first heard Stratovarius, I though “oh – so that’s where it comes from”. And yes, it is obvious – Sonata’s 1999 debut Ecliptica was more or less a tribute to Stratovarius. There is basically no orginiality, although there are some really good tracks (including “FullMoon”, “Letter to Dana” and “Kingdom For a Heart”).

Both Silence (2001) and Winterheart’s Guild (2003) were MUCH more original, with several truly unique songs. The band, though, started to get bored with this style that more or less was a big tribute to the 1980′s power metal band. All this resulted in the more progressive Reckoning Night of 2004, an album that I’ve never really been that fond to. There is a lot of “purer” heavy metal – “Misplaced”, “Ain’t Your Fairytale”, “Wildfire” – and a lot of freakish let’s-have-fun-and-play-our-asses-of in “The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Real Puppet”. This latter new angle was also a great part of their next album, 2007′s Unia. Unia was their first album to take a completely different direction, away from the general power metal and into a field of… can I call it progressive metal? I don’t think I can. It is a type of melodic metal, with influences from classical music, power metal, thrash metal, progressive metal, classical rock, psychedelic rock… It was something I had never heard before. At first I didn’t really like Unia, but I listened it through a few times… and it’s incredible.

The Days of Grays was the successor of Unia, and I was really worried. What could this lead to? Would it be another great turn, maybe into thrash or doom? Would it follow Unia closely – maybe too closely? Or would it be a turn back into the power metal field? It turned out I was wrong altogether.

The album kicks off with an instrumental intro – something I am a big fan of as long as it is good and not just something thrown in. And that’s absolutely not Everything Fades to Gray (Instrumental), which leads perfectly into the album’s epic, the wonderful Deathaura. This eight-minute track is a bit disappointed to me, actually, since Sonata usually has so great epics (“The Power of One”, “The End of This Chapter”, “Caleb”, “White Pearl, Black Oceans”), but I suppose I’m just constantly annoyed by the same thing; it is too fast. I would not mind at all if it was mixed into being played for a total of 15 och 20 minutes… Because as it is it’s just too fast, too much reminding of Wildfire. It’s okay for a minute at the time, but going fast as hell in eight minutes?

The second track is also the first single – The Last Amazing Grays – and is a beautiful semi-ballad about dying proud and with dignity. I actually cried the first time I heard it (when the single was leaked), although it’s now quite overplayed (I think it’s about 80 plays according to Last.fm, the single edit included).

Flag in the Ground is the third track and the second single. If you prefer the old school Sonata, this is the song you’ll like on Days of Grays. The song is a remake of the unreleased song “BlackOut” from the band’s early demos. It’s a really catchy tune with an epic bridge and finale - “I put the flag in the ground / Screaming and shouting, I’ve never been so proud, love / I make my way into the great unknown / Land by the river and a newbuilt home / Every night when I’m looking at the fullmoon rising / I hold you and know that we are free.”

My favorite songs on the album are probably “Juliet” and “The Truth is Out There“. Juliet is both a big allusion to the famous Shakespeare play / the Italian legend of Romeo and Juliet, as well as the fourth and (I think) last episode in the Caleb tale (“Don’t Say a Word”; “The End of This Chapter”; “Caleb”). And it’s wonderful! It’s so beautiful, so sad, so epic! “These are my final lines, I used all my nine lives / My soul reason to die; there’s no life without you”. And The Truth is Out There… what can I say? So incredibly original and… well… strange but great at the same time. I really love it’s atmosphere, and it’s lyrics linked constantly with the great TV series The X Files.

What I missed on Unia was the ballads. On the earlier albums, there were lots of wonderful guitar-based ballads such as Letter to Dana and Shamandalie, but this sort of dropped out with Unia. With Days of Grays, it’s a bit different; there ARE two ballads, if not quite different to the original type. Breathing is actually one of my new favorite songs with Sonata. It is very melancholic and epic, and reminds me of Draw Me. As if the World Wasn’t Ending is different, it is a bit more… well… I don’t know. It is not a bad song, but it’s not excellent either. It is somewhere in the middle, just your standard ballad.

What can I say about The Days of Grays as a conclusion? It is great! Go buy it! At this point, it is honestly my favorite Sonata Arctica album, very original, melodic, sad, epic… It is just wonderful. Try it out, but be careful not to judge it too early; I didn’t like it at all until the third or fourth listen.

It’s nice to see my writing is really appreciated sometimes, to see the glow in one’s eyes that says the story could just as well have been in a high-class short story collection or part of a best-seller novel.

Thanks.