Rating: 
Summary: Very quick read, keeps the reader wanting to continue.
Review: Just finished the book and wished I had obtained it while on vacation so I wouldn't have had to put it down so often. This book is well written and moves quickly. No problem with dull or slow places that I noticed. Dr. Lecter is his usual gruesome self and has an equally gruesome enemy. The only thing that I can say that I didn't like was the ending. But that was personal preference in how I was hoping that it would end.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Development of SOTL Characters
Review: I admit that I sat glued reading Hannibal hoping that Harris's treatment of the characters would revert back to what they were in SOTL. Sadly Harris failed in Hannibal what he accomplished in Red Dragon & SOTL. The 3diminsional characters fleshed out in SOTL become 2 diminsional in Hannibal. Both Hannibal and Clarice deserved better character development that they got here. The "humanizing" of Hannibal and the "dehumanizing" of Starling was incredibly disappointing. The Starling character deserved so much better than what was afforded her, especially at the end. Granted a further sequel is now possible...but I have to admit...I certainly won't look forward to it as much as I looked forward to this sequel. What a pity!
Rating:
Summary: A doorway onto human evil
Review: "No one can run, no one can hide; / Isn't that Lecter there beside you?" (To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim from his work about the man-eating Sweeney Todd.) Oh, how wonderful! There seems to be no middle ground on "Hannibal" -- one either loves him or hates him. Or, rather, loves or hates the book; though I certainly wouldn't mind an evening of dinner and conversation with the erudite Dr. Lecter provided someone ELSE was cooking, and that I had a couple of bodyguards along...just in case...though even that might not be enough, given Dr. Lecter's seemingly endless resources of deadly talent. What Thomas Harris has most certainly not given us is the ordinary, run-of-the-mill horror story, one in which the good guys and bad guys are easily spotted and cheered for. Mr. Harris has reached out and seized us by the jugular (or the sweetbreads, if you prefer). His is a world where good and evil have lost their mythological meanings and often the choices left are only the ones to be made from the lesser of the evils presented to us daily. In other words, his world is the real world in all its Grand Guignol excess. One no longer wonders if Mr. Harris has gone over the deep end when one sees newspaper accounts of parents horribly abusing their children; and one sees actual Grand Guignol when such incidents prompt less public outcry than the abuse of a small dog, something that occurred not long ago in my locale. If on tries to escape from the horrors of the real world in this work of fiction, one instead finds them put under a magnifying glass and brought closer than is comfortable. Perhaps Dr. Lecter is an anomaly, but in many ways Mason Verger is not, a prospect that can only terrify when we realize it. Evil is not often black and white; it is much more likely to be slippery and ambiguous. What I think has disturbed so many of the readers of "Hannibal" is perhaps the most horrifying idea of all -- we have met Dr. Lecter, and he is us. Though I am presently checking the top of my head once an hour to make sure it's still attached...
Rating: 
Summary: Don't finish this book
Review: My advice to anyone reading this book is to stop on page 463 and make up your own ending. It could not possibly be worse than the crappy one in the book. The rest of the book was ok, but I grew a little tired of Harris constantly using confusing metaphors over and over. Words that you have never seen together before, but he puts them together 30 times in 100 pages. Because they sound so "off" you notice when he keeps repeating them. Buy a thesaurus for crying out loud!
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: Red Dragon- excellent, SOTL - brilliant, Hannibal - waste of paper What a disappointment. The psychological picture of Lector built up in the previous books has been ruined by this sequel. If I didn't know better I'd say it was written by someone else. It started promisingly but just deteriorated into an extremely unlikely, dissatisfying conclusion.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what you expect but should it be?
Review: I'm surprised by most of the reviews. If Harris wrote books that were what everyone expected, why would we bother? I enjoyed finding out why Hannibal is the way he is, since you sort of like him it's nice to know he did have motivation. I admit the ending was a big surprise, but isn't that what we like in a good book? I can't see it being a movie and I don't know if there will be anohter Hannibal book but I did really enjoy this one and I did have to reread the ending. I loved the detail and historical allusions. If you want a straight pulp shocker read someone else. This was evidently the book he wanted to write, Hollywood or no and I did really enjoy reading it even if it was not at all what I expected and maybe because of that.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a slap in the face to the reader.
Review: Unlike the previous books in the series, Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, this story and characters are hateful. Mr. Harris spends more time on sadistic themes than in crafting a good story. Yes,it is well researched in terms of detail in the Arts, History, Architecture, etc., but an encyclopedia would have been a better read. Mr. Harris seems to reveal his feelings about his readers in his description of the crowds attending the Atrocious Torture Instuments exhibit: "But the essence of the worst, the true asafoetida of the human spirit, is not found in the Iron Maiden or the whetted edge; Elemental Ugliness is found in the faces of the crowd." Does Mr. Harris despise the reader for his/her facination with his horror story? It would seem so as he attempts to "slap the clammy flab of our submissive consciousness hard enough to get our attention" by weaving a story that is rank with sadism and devoid of any redeeming goodness. Previously admirable characters such as Crawford and Mapp shrivel and disappear, seeming to have given up the good fight. Anyone can put together a horror story. Not many can put together a horror story that gives us heros. Not only are there no heros, the ending destroys the one light in this sickening morass, Starling. The ending is cheap and unbelievable.
Rating:
Summary: Compared to his earlier books this stinks to high heaven!
Review: _Silence of the Lambs_ and _Red Dragon_ were truly terrifying books, and Dr. Hannibal Lecter was a malevolent and frightening presence at the heart of each novel. _Hannibal_, however sucks, it doesn't even come close to the quality of the earlier novels. Rather than being a shadowy figure of evil, with a taste for human flesh, as he was in the earlier novels, Lecter is now portrayed as a man of the world, a psychologist who mutilates his patients (just the really bad ones), knows a lot about higher mathematics, Florentine art and Renaissance Italy, and has a taste for the finer things in life which sometimes includes human brains served fresh at the dinner table. All of this of course is not because Dr. Lecter is evil, no it is because he had a traumatic childhood (And this week on Springer, people whose traumatic childhoods turned them into cannibalistic serial killers). As bad as the portrayal of Lecter is the portrayal of Clarice Starling is even worse; in _Silence of the Lambs_ Starling is naive yet tough, a pawn in a sick contest between FBI Agent Jack Crawford and Lecter. Despite her naivete and the fact that she is being used by both Lecter and Crawford, Starling does manage to come out on top. However, in _Hannibal_ Starling is portrayed as a burned out FBI agent whose career has gone badly at the agency. I find it hard to believe that a woman who had managed to face down a cannnibalistic serial killer and kill another serial killer would have difficulty dealing with the idiot machinations of Paul Krendler, a Justice Department bureaucrat who is Starling's chief nemesis in this book. The ending of this book also portrays Starling in a light that is totally false to the way she was portrayed in _Silence of the Lambs_. I won't spoil it, but it is difficult to choke down. If you absolutely have to read this then borrow it from a friend who has already thrown their money away, or check it out from the library or as a last resort wait for the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: No wonder it took Harris 11 years to write this!
Review: Harris surprised me. I didn't think there was anything too shocking left, but I was wrong. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine that anyone could overshadow Hannibal in his sociopathy but this is truly a macabre Cinderella ending to a nightmare.
Rating:
Summary: An imaginary conversation
Review: Editor: Uh, Tom, your agent gave me this package that supposedly contains the new book "Hannibal" and, for the life of me, I just don't get it. Is this the finished product?T.H.: Hey, it's been what, eleven years, and the public's salivating for something new, anything with the words "Lecter" or "Starling" or better yet, "cannibal". Don't you get it? I used lots of big words, wrote elegantly about these places in Italy, and spiced it up with the hokiest gore I could think of. They'll, pardon the pun, eat it up. It doesn't have to make sense, nor does it have to be a qualified follow-up. Just print it, throw it out there, and prepare to make a down-payment on your Hamptons getaway.Editor: But, Tom......T.H.: Hey, trust me on this...it's got my name on it, right? And it IS titled "Hannibal", right? It'll sell. In bunches. And I'll make it up to them with my next book, "The Return Of Mason Verger", and if that doesn't do it, then how about "Krendler's List", or....Editor: Oh, Tom, you're such a kidder. Let's do lunch.T.H.: Don't forget the fava beans. I'll bring the chianti.
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