Rating: 
Summary: A big letdown
Review: Harris got all the hype and then left us holding the bag. Characters are unbelievable and the ending out of this world. To wait so long for the sequal to Silence of the Lambs is a big letdown. Book could be half its size and tell twice the story. Gore is in with Harris.
Rating:
Summary: love thomas harris, this was a BIG let down
Review: thomas harris must have gotten tired while writing Hanibal. Well written but poor imagination throughout and especially toward the end. let us hope that he can redeme himself with his next book .
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but I need help with the ending.....HELP ME!!!!!
Review: The book was a great read considering the nasty content in some of the scenes.....but all that is for naught because our office is in total controversy over the ending. My question is this, very simple, was Clarice all drugged out for the remained of her life or did she actually fall in love with Hannibal? I say she was drugged every day, that's the only way she would stay with Hannibal. My manager says she was drugged at first, but then fell under his spell. We have gone back and reread it several times, each stressing our point and finding passages to back up our claims. Who is right? My e-mail is jweimar@tu.infi.net
Rating: 
Summary: Please tell me I dreamt that inane ending.
Review: How discouraging to have read the entire literary work, riveted to each word, only to discover that I had exhausted hours of my precious time for nothing. The ending left me unsure just where Mr. Thomas Harris will commence with his next novel. I have no doubt that he clearly has his work cut out for him.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing to the max!!!!
Review: I waited for this book with more anticipation than probably any other book I have ever read. The need for Harris to provide details that got more graphic as the story progressed is nothing but a shock ploy. While I loved his other books this offering has poor character development and worse plot flow. If this is what takes him all these years to produce I for one will not be anxiously awaiting another.
Rating:
Summary: averge, just average
Review: after all that hype, I'm just glad I bought it through amazon and saved some $$. Until the creepy but totally unbelievable ending, the plot was predictable, and the writing pretentious. But I felt compelled to keep reading, just like rubberneckers feel compelled to watch a gory traffic accident, wondering what gross and disgusting thing will happen next.True the ending is creepy, and it caught me by surprise, but the reason why it did was because the characters did not act "in character"-- Harris created these people and gave them personalities and motivations, and they just did not act true to form here. The other characters (including Clarice!) were 2-dimensional comic book stereotypes; shallow at best-- racist, sexist, and homophobic at worst. I just couldn't get interested in them. And unlike SOTL or Red Dragon, no real deep themes here. To paraphrase another reviewer: Man-eating PIGS???!!! Oh please...
Rating:
Summary: A New Lecter-Starling Book
Review: Perhaps potential readers who are only familiar with the characters of Lecter and Starling from the movie, should wait for the movie of "Hannibal". Since Thomas Harris' defined the "serial-killer" thriller genre with "Red Dragon" and "Silence of the Lambs", readers (and movie audiences) have been deluged with a glut of inferior rip-offs ("Seven", Patricia Cornwell, Chris Carter, etc., etc.). So much so that the Creator of the trend, Harris himself, probably decided 'enough was enough'. "Hannibal" is first and foremost a comment by Harris on the phenomenon of "serial killer as celebrity". And a very darkly comic one, it is. If you don't have a sense of humor (and irony) don't read "Hannibal". If you are literal-minded, don't read "Hannibal", you'll be tortured forever by the ending! If you wonder whatever happened to the great tradition of Southern Gothic storytelling where tall tales and nightmares collide to produce a combustible comic vision: welcome to the world of Thomas Harris (heir to Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers).
Rating:
Summary: I wanted more
Review: This much anticipated sequel to Silence of the Lambs is somewhat disappointing and pales in comparison to its predecesor. It is slow to start and once it does get moving, it becomes somewhat predictable. This piece is interesting in its switch of roles and the methods used to possibly change the reader's original alliances, but takes the reader down an unlikely path which is too shallowly explored. In all, Hannibal is a good read and a fair sequel to Silence of the Lambs, but if given the opportunity to speak with the author I would ask that he truly finish this story. Maybe another sequel?....
Rating: 
Summary: There's gotta be a better way to spend $13.98
Review: I kept working my way through this book, bored silly, hoping that Thomas Harris would redeem himself by coming up with a finale worthy of the excellent "Silence" and "Red Dragon." So what happens? The worst ending to a book... ever! Consider this a warning: don't waste your money. Spend it on beer, instead. Even if you get sick, it's still be a better experience than "Hannibal."
Rating:
Summary: A sequel that would never live up to Silence of the Lambs
Review: Despite a rather turgid beginning, I found this story both gripping and engrossing. However, a rather ludicrous finale meant that my enjoyment was cut in half. Harris has succeeded in delving deeper into Hannibal's psyche, a point that I find truly fascinating. The inclusion of Clarice adds the edge that always lived in the first book, and I find Harris uses her character very well, almost preparing both Starling and Hannibal for their inevitable "showdown", if it can be called that. The use of breathtaking literary illustrations, sweeping between the cultural and beautiful streets of Florence, through to the horror and black humour of a man having his brain sliced and eaten, is extremely effective, and Harris wins at bring ing the reader closer into Hannibal's world. Despite the strengths of the book, the weaknesses are just as apparent. Lacklustre "villains" and pointless red herrings haunt the pages, and whilst it makes a darn good yarn, it never really ventures above that status; never gripping the reader, or, rather, never gripping me beyond "do I really want to turn the page?". I found it a long, sometimes fantastic, sometimes tedious story. Although, throughout my reading of it, I couldn't help but read it with Anthony Hopkins' voice in my mind, and I think that's a good thing, his slithering, calculating tongue dominating what could have been a dated thriller. It's not dated, although it only just scrapes past that pitfall.
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