The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

by Jonas Jonasson

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

So, this book is fun and quirky and has a lot of diversity and fun characters. It's even a bit memorable in its way, so I'd have to say that... generally? I liked it!

There are a lot of good talking points in The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden. First of all, there is the voice it's told in: the voice has that dry, fun wit that I relate to a lot of British science fiction writers. I really like that voice, because it catches me by surprise and makes me laugh with its subtlety and pointing out the obvious. It's a great voice, and I loved it. There were definitely moments it made me chuckle, generally from Nombeko's point-of-view.

One of the downsides from this kind of voice is that character personalities get a bit lost in the storytelling. I generally enjoyed the four characters that came together for the second half of the book, but I never got that sense of individualism that makes me fall in love with a character. We knew who the characters were by how they were described, but they never really got to demonstrate it for themselves outside the narrator's personal commentary.

The plot itself is a series of impossible events that take Nombeko and a bomb that shouldn't exist from South Africa all the way up to Sweden, and the book is filled misadventures that are fun on their own. My greatest criticism is that the story tended to meander, giving many less interesting characters time to introduce themselves and have a bit of a backstory. It made the book drag out, even if each story could be considered - on its own - an amusing anecdote. This is just a stylistic choice, and I'm sure some people will love it. For my personal reading style, this was a thing that sometimes made me want to tear my hair out and holler, "Well, get on with it!".

Once we got into the second half of the book with Celestine and the two Holgas, I enjoyed the story a lot more. It took on a sense of direction and normalcy rather than just a series of unfortunate events. For myself, I needed that to happen in order for it to hold my interest. Because of this transition, The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden moved from a book I was seriously considering DNF-ing to one I was casually curious about.

Generally speaking it was a unique and memorable read, and in full reflection, I'm glad I read it. It was fun and quirky and very different. I don't feel like it was really a blockbuster, amazing sort of book. But it's a fun one to idle away some time, as long as you can offer it a bit of suspension of disbelief.