Rating: 
Summary: What was he thinking?!?
Review: The brilliance of The Silence of the Lambs was the mental connection between the two main characters - the "quid pro quo". Unfortunately, Harris has written a storyline that keeps Hannibal and Starling apart until the very last scenes.
Rating: 
Summary: Like liver and fava beans with Ripple - not a fine Chianti
Review: Having anticipated another chapter in the Lector story for years, and having re-read SOtL and Red Dragon, I was thrilled to see "Hannibal" on the bookstands. I was ready to be equally thrilled by the book. Wrong! Parts of the book were masterfully written, but the last chapter was disappointment writ large. In the name of character development, Dr. Lecter was raised to the level of superman. Krendler was a cartoon, as were most of the other characters. I don't need a happy ending, but I do need one that is plausible and fits the sense of the story. Wrong again! Compared to the previous two books in the series, this is tabloid journalism.
Rating: 
Summary: Love it or Hate it you will never forget it.
Review: I must admit that after the almost 13 year wait between Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal (Silence of the Lambs was published in 1986 remember?) I was greatly anticipating the sequel. I have read almost all the reviews associtated with this book and while I feel that there were some major problems with character developement and plot, I must admit that I was not all that dissapointed. Why some of you may ask? Well for one reason, I knew Mr. Harris was going to hard pressed to top Silence of the Lambs, which in my opinion was one of the best written thrillers of the past 30 years, and number two the film adapation of the book did win an Oscar. I know that has little to do with how good the book is, but when the film wins an Oscar us readers do tend to expect more out of any sequel be it book or movie. Mr. Harris did spend alot of time revealing the motivations behind Lecter's sadistic tendencies, and while it did tend to remove some of the mystique from the character I feel this is something that he did need to do. Lecter was written as a flesh and blood human being remember? And there is always something that makes a human being turn bad (and no I am not going to get into a debate over nature versus nuture here). I had a hard time believing that Lecter was evil just for the sake of being evil, which is how is was protrayed in the first two books, and in this book Harris does paint a rather convincing picture of what exactly it was that made Lecter turn against society and become a monster. My main problem with this book was the Clarice Starling character, in the Silence of the Lambs, she was portrayed as a strong, resourceful and inituitive woman a worthy heir to Will Graham the hero of Harris' first book Red Dragon, in this book however she is reduced to less than that, now I know that seven years in any govenment agency (esp. the FBI) is enough to suck the life out of anyone, but I had a hard time believing that Clarice would let that happen to herself. By the end of the book I was looking for her to be the good balancing out all of the evil that permeated the novel, and of course it turns out she wasn't. We tend to like our heroes in fiction clear cut and honest and with this novel I can honestly say that did not happen. The book tended to read more like a morality play than a thriller and that is not really why I read Mr. Harris' previous books. While I did have a problem with the way the characters where protrayed in the book, I do think it was very well written and did move along at a relatively nice pace, which is all I really ask for in a Thomas Harris novel.
Rating:
Summary: What a disappointment after the first two Lector books.
Review: There is no suspense, just insipid characters and vivid gory descriptions that somehow don't even arouse horror--they're simply too unbelievable. What a shame the character development didn't continue after such a brilliant start(s).
Rating:
Summary: Cute romance, but not credible
Review: I was very much expecting this novel to be a suspenseful thriller...but the more I read, the less credible it became. From Hannibal to Starling, the characters were so grotesquely unrealistic that I kept wondering how this got published. The ending left me incredulous...simply because it was so farfetched not even my vivid imagination could conjure how a serial killer would act like a male character in the worst romance novel. Let's label this one FANTASY. And HOPE it is NEVER made into a movie -- at least not the novel version.
Rating:
Summary: Good to the last... but then the last was a real let down.
Review: I was engrossed in the first three quarters of the book. It was wellwritten as you would expect from Harris. However, the credibilitythat was carefully built around Hannibal and especially Starling was destroyed in the end. I wondered if he ran out of time and just turned something in to meet the minimal requirments of his publisher after putting the book down for the last time.
Rating:
Summary: Hannibal the horrible
Review: What an ending! Before I read the book, I was aware that there is a twist at the end. That was the only reason that I endured the slow pace and boring side plots. As I was nearing the end, I thought, "No, this could not be the ending, the twist is coming up." I was totally disappointed. That IS the ending. If you are looking for "and they live happily everafter" kind of ending, read Beauty and the Beast.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrific book
Review: This is one book that is very tough to put down. I read it in three sittings. Not for people who are easily grossed-out; the things described are sometimes very difficult to stand. You will sympathize with Hannibal before the book is through. That is the scariest thing!
Rating:
Summary: Wait for the paperback version
Review: Character development: Clarice Starling - Good further development up until she ran off on her own. No matter how badly the bureau had treated her, I just didn't buy her blowing it all away, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Jeffison45's review is right on the money. "The perfectionist Lecter couldn't be satisfied with the Stepford Wife version of Clarice Starling we're left with at the end." I definitely wasn't. Lecter - He's not such a bad guy, just terribly misunderstood, looking for a replacement for the only one who ever understood him, Mischa. Yeah, right. How many holocaust victims went through much, much worse and didn't turn out to be sociopaths? Memory palace was cool but a throw away vehicle to showcase Harris's descriptive capabilities. Barney - I think I would've moved a whole lot sooner. Margot - I felt no empathy with her. Sure she was complex, extraordinary, but in the end I didn't care what she did. Part of what made Silence of the Lambs so good was that even the throw away characters meant something to the reader. In Hannibal, they didn't. Mason - Excellent bad guy however a little whiny. What started him off? If he was fabulously rich enough to hire people who would do absolutely anything for him and if he hated life so much then why didn't he just hire someone to kill him as he lay hooked up to his machines? Mason henchmen - I agree with the reader from Chicago, IL: why would anyone want to work for Verger anyway? Jack Crawford - thrown away completely Ardelia Mapp - thrown away completely Italian cop - who cares?!? Plot: I didn't read Red Dragon but I did read Silence of the Lambs. Obviously he wasn't out to create another suspense thriller because there was no suspense. So the question is, what did Harris create? A horror novel about modern monsters, perhaps. The whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, it's just a bunch of parts woven together with Lecter as the common thread. Believable or not, I did think the ending was cool brains - er - I mean, cool beans... Style: Yup, I had to read till the end in almost one sitting, so Harris still held my attention. But through the Florence scenes, I kept reading because I was still waiting for the good stuff to begin. The exquisite phrases all seemed to belong to someone else, as attributed to at the end. Summary: I believe Mr. Harris may be suffering from the same deficiency as Stephen King: a severe lack of a good editor.
Rating:
Summary: Thomas Harris gets the last laugh I suppose
Review: This book is, I truly hope, a joke. The pressure from Hollywood must have been tremendous for a sequel to The Silence of The Lambs. However, I'm insulted and quite peeved that Thomas Harris took his frustrutions out on his fans. We're the ones shelling out too much money for a book that was obviously written out of spite. Hollywood will still get their movie, albeit with a different (and most assuredly BETTER) ending. While I share Thomas Harris' feelings about "sequels", I wish that Hollywood would have been the target of his inside joke, and not the fans. Shame on you, Mr. Harris!
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