Hannibal : Movie Tie In

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Summary: Hannibal (and ending) worked for me. I couldn't put it down!
Review: Yes the soon to be infamous ending threw me for a loop, but I laughed and nodded. Throughout the book I had to wonder who I was rooting for, and I was satisfied to feel my empathy was justified.

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Summary: this book rides in the middle
Review: i'm torn about this book. it's definitely a fun read; however, that's all it is. much like Harris's other books, HANNIBAL maintains massive elements of suspense and highly psychotic violence. and when you add an eloquent delivery to this equation, HANNIBAL becomes a number you immerse yourself in. but this book, is by no means, Harris's finest work. HANNIBAL is inferior to RED DRAGON and, especially, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. the sad fact is this: it's too hard to say if this book is really good or bad . . . it's basically a judgement call. and a judgement call always must be made from the middle of the road.

Rating:
Summary: A regrettable and major disappointment
Review: A significant let-down. Rather like Stanley Kubrick filming THE SHINING; except here an author has taken an intellectual wrecking-ball to his own creation. Thomas Harris seems to have decided that he's above his earlier thrillers and that this time he would do something not only Daring but Deep. The resulting mess, HANNIBAL, seems to be more of a collection of tics, mannerisms, and twitches than a novel -- the literary equivalent, perhaps, of Hannibal Lecter's "collecting" of church collapses and other such disasters. There are a few interesting and well-done scenes, but the author seems to have completely lost his grip on his characters. (Lecter is by this point not only a doctor and a musician, but a Dante expert, a theoretical physicist, etc. In the next book he will presumably be revealed as a ballet dancer; a brilliant programmer in UNIX, Java, and COBOL; and quite possibly the next Pope) The last third of the novel is an astonishing, utterly unbelievable, shambles. The storyline begun by breathing human beings in RED DRAGON and SILENCE is completed here by shabby, ill-conceived automatons.

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Summary: Just Want To Warn Those Who Still Hopes For A Good Read
Review: Pure trash, seriously, listen to the other reviews, don't even bother....those bad reviews posted above and below this one will prove to be more interesting and intriguing than the actual novel which is a disgrace to the publisher, the reader, and ultimately the writer himself.....

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Summary: Starlings and Lecter, we hardly knew ye!
Review: Apparently Mr. Harris needs to reread the first two brilliant installments of his trilogy. Hannibal takes two characters previously well developed and morphs them into entirely different beings. Clarice straying from her firm belief in law and order, regardless of the political climate of the FBI? Dr.Lecter delving in the psychobabble he so detested in the prequels and showing a human compassionate side? I think not! I finished the book this morning and immediately began calling all those I knew to be fans of the trilogy to warn them to save their money on this terribly disappointing "sequel".

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Summary: Brilliant - I can't get the ending out of my head...
Review: Harris has created not one, but TWO villians of the most brutal and relentless sort.

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Summary: TERRIBLE!!!!! WAS NOT WORTH THE WAIT!
Review: I like all Harris fans could not wait for this book. I never could have imagined it like this. I am lost for words to express my feelings at how bad this was.

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Summary: WoW....what a book!
Review: Having read "Red Dragon" and "Silence of the Lambs", I was totally unprepared for "Hannibal". The book was a definite surprise. Harris has only gotten better. I couldn't put the book down until I had read it through the first time and re-read the last 50 or so pages. There had been an attachment to Clarice Starling by Dr. Lecter since the "Lambs" book, and Harris played on that with a masterful touch. Even though the above-mentioned books were excellent suspense, I anticipated the endings long before the end. With Hannibal, I had no idea what to expect. I was blown away...and that isn't easy for a seasoned reader of fiction such as I. Kudos to Mr. Harris. Please say that there will be more!

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Summary: I got a 50% discount and still felt cheated.
Review: A tedious, plodding, dissapointing read

Rating:
Summary: Characters are so changed that the entire book fails.
Review: I love the anticipation of the arrival of my favorite novelists' new books. But, Harris's new novel disturbed me on several levels. Harris writes well, even if his ever-changing point of view is sometimes confusing, yet this type of confusion can be overcome. It is his character development which changes the remarkable, even admirable character of Clarice to amoral, and the monstrous character of Hannibal to understandable, even acceptable, which changes this from an interesting read to a disturbing read. If a novelist is going to write only for himself, there is no obligation to anyone but himself, but if he is writing for an audience who trusts him, then a novelist has some obligation not to take already well-developed characters and change them to such an extent they are then unrecognizable. It is even more abhorrent to become so in love with your characters that you try to excuse unexcusable behavior. Hannibal is a monster, even if he is a human monster. It is fine to expose his human side, but to use the human side to excuse the monster is unacceptable. I left this book hating it not so much for the horrid characterizations, but more for the attempt to take monstrous actions and ideas and humanize them. Violence, much less cannibalism is ugly, not beautiful. If Hannibal is a monster, do not try to make him anything else. And as terrible as life is to people sometimes, the terrible events can not be used to excuse the kind of violence of which Hannibal shows himself capable. This novel's characterizations attempt to prove otherwise and because of this, the novel fails.