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Summary: Doesn't anybody get satire anymore?
Review: C'mon, this is FICTION, I found Hannibal absorbing and amusing. Not to mention having the best revenge scene I've EVER seen in a book. Yes, it does require both a willing suspension of disbelief and a reasonable appreciation of satire, something it seems that many readers just don't get.
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Summary: Absolutely delicious!
Review: "Hannibal" is superlative... a rare delicacy among modern popular fiction. Don't expect a copycat sequel to "Silence of the Lambs". This is an original, audacious work that is as stylish and engrossing as it is nightmarishly disturbing. The finale is OUT OF THIS WORLD!
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Summary: Ending was a big suprise!!
Review: The first 150 pages were rather slow but once you got into the book it was a fabulous and fast read. I couldn't wait to get to the next chapter to see would happen next!! The ending was a real surprise and not at all like I had imagined it would end. A great summer read.
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Summary: What happened to the ending of such a good book?
Review: This book started off brilliantly. The new characters were superb and the story line was fantastic. Harris did well to prevent Lecter becoming mundane and 'normal' by establishing his exquisite taste which he never compromised in the new book. I found the constant references to comments Lecter and Clarice made in Silence a little tedious at times. It was the weird and obscure ending which I feel really let this book down. I can't believe such a strong character as Clarice could have been so easily thrown out of the FBI without a damn good fight or choose a life with Lecter? It was very unsatisfactory the way Starlings disappearance was glossed over too. Very odd and disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: A tasty meal
Review: I'm sorry for all of those reviewers out there who despised the ending, were not captivated with the look into Lecter's mind, and as one review adamantly said,"the poor use of commas." This is a great book!Lecter is his scariest, because at points you can relate to him, you have to call yourself back and remember that he's a serial killer and your not supposed to like him. Many have said there is not enough gore in the book either, all I have to say are the pigs and the eel, buy this book, it is worth the money.
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Summary: Sympathy for the Devil
Review: I waited so long for the sequel. I presumed I would be disappointed. I figured we would get another serial-killer, another flirtation-pursuit between Lecter and Starling, another tidy ending where Starling becomes director of the FBI and Lecter (I was hoping) gets away at the end to wreak havoc in a future book. But Harris isn't Patricia Cornwell and he refused to fill his market niche. He may write the world's best police procedurals, but he obviously isn't content just to give the public what the public expects. Hannibal shows Harris is incapable of being a hack. I've read Hannibal three times now. Each time I have come away with a different impression of the novel - and it's a novel, not a pulp-fiction thriller at all. The first time I read it I thought it was a brilliant black-comic, Southern-Gothic extravaganza : only Harris could write that one of the leading characters, after committing murder, came to regret her actions because of all the attention the tabloids were giving her! Then I re-read the book and saw a fresco of what American society is at the end of the century : full of sound and fury, violence and madness, a tabloid culture baying for the blood of the designated Villain of the Month (Clinton, Hannibal Lecter and finally Clarice Starling..), a place where good and evil have been supplanted by political manoeuvring, corrupt bureaucracies - a world where a decent heroine can never find the honor that is her due. But on reading Hannibal a third time (while still discovering jokes I'd missed on the previous two occasions - Hannibal is also extremely funny) - I was struck by the doom-laden atmosphere of the final chapters, the almost Visconti-like feeling. Beneath all the brutality, Harris has the gentleness of heart to grant some measure of redemption to characters who have been prisoners of their pasts, incapable of shaking off the tentacles of the dead. Thomas Harris is no longer just the world's finest writer of police procedurals. With Hannibal, he has become America's foremost novelist, unwilling to bend to convention or respect any commercial agenda. Bravo!
Rating: 
Summary: Probably one of the worst books ever written.
Review: Hannibal is a just plain lousy book. Thomas Harris appears to be mocking his loyal readers by giving them a poorly constructed plot and a ludicrous ending. Perhaps that is why he has not written a book in over ten years. He spends more time in telling us about Italian Renaissance History as relating to the Italian cop and what pigs can do to a poor soul than framing a concise narrative.The villains are boring and Hannibal himself appears at times to be a good guy. As for the future of Clarice Starling, the book makes me totally uninterested in her fate.
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Summary: Weren't you expecting a romance?
Review: I certainly was, and thanks to Mr. Harris, received one. From the moment of Clarice and Hannibal's first touch in SILENCE, I expected the good doctor to become obsessed. And wouldn't any woman be flattered by such a man's attentions? The ending was haunting and raised all sorts of wonderful questions for the reader. Will the two begin a killing spree together? Or will Clarice be the steadying force to Dr Lector's madness? Will they expand Clarice's limited knowledge of human cuisine? Will they have a child? Can Will Graham get himself rehabilitated enough to chase after the duo? The book was not another SILENCE, nor should it have been. The book was written for Hannibal alone, as the title implies. And, for Hannibal, it was a happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: red sparks of brilliance, but many black holes too
Review: Many readers have stated their disappointment with the ending of this book, and I am inclined to agree. The writer will carry you through several hundred pages of brilliantly sustained hyper-reality, characters that will remind you of people that you know, perhaps wished that you didn't know, scenes that will distress you with the immediate urgency of the evening news, charm you with descriptions of old world culture reminiscent of 'Interview With the Vampire', inform you in layman's terms of contemporary metaphysics regarding the nature of time, and ultimately plunge you into a milieu of stunningly implausible outcomes. Apparently this book took Mr. Harris about ten years to complete. I wonder if he himself got lost in the effort, perhaps in a sort of novelist's 'palace of dreams', and found easy closure through the anticipation of yet another installment of the Hannibal saga, an artistic retreat that has proved commercially lucrative for similar genre writers such as Anne Rice and Stephen King, notably also with considerably reduced critical integrity.
Rating:
Summary: Thomas Harris does it again
Review: Harris manages to pull it off--he skillfully seduces the reader into cheering for the monstrous Hannibal Lector (and he IS monstrous). Suspenseful, gory, and moving. The trajectory is bizarre, but to my mind, it works beautifully.
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