Rating: 
Summary: who are these people? am I supposed to know them?
Review: I just don't know what to think. It's an interesting plot and it's plain that Harris is more than just a pulp thriller writer (sure do want to visit Florence now). I preferred Silence of the Lambs. I just can't imagine Starling ending up as she does. I worry that without Jonathan Demme to humanize/edit the story, this movie will fail. I don't think I'll be buying anyone this book
Rating: 
Summary: This book was a major disappointment.
Review: The only thing good about this book, is the money it will make Harris. He didn't stay true to the characters and the ending makes John Grishams endings appear as literary mastery. Pick up a copy of Terry Kays THE KIDNAPPING OF AARON GREENE. An author you never disappoints.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and unbelievable
Review: I can't believe that Mr. Harris signed his name to this drivel. Did he think the readers would forget the basic elements in the characters' personalities? The ending is shocking, which would not be bad, except that it is also inadequately explained. There are so many ways this novel could have gone - I wish Mr. Harris had chosen a different option.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, though not great
Review: I was really psyched up about the release of Thomas Harris's latest book. A week before it was released, I procured Harris's second book,_Red Dragon_, and read it in two days. I struggled to procure a copy of _Silence of the Lambs_, although I was unable to (don't even ask). The best I could to was watch the movie again.As you have surely heard from other reviews, _Hannibal_ has not lived up to expectations. _Hannibal_ details the latest exploits of everyone's favorite cannibal, the good Dr. Lecter. Though the two previous books in which he appeared featured him as a primary character, he was hardly ever a main one--he was generally there to add insight into the protagonist and antagonist. This book features him as THE main character, with virtually everyone else playing supporting rolls. Perhaps the greatest and most blatant thing lacking from this book is that it no longer offers the insight and psychological profiling that played such a major part in the previous two books. In addition, it also lacks its precursor's sense of flow and progress. _Hannibal_ is often slow and boring; parts of it are prolonged and truly without point. The beginning was pointless, the middle had some good bits, and the end was pathetic. It seems like Harris needs a better editor. That being said, it really is not all that bad of a book--just not of the same caliber of the ones that came before it. It lacks the sense of reality and grittyness that really formed the other two. It is somewhat suspensful at some parts (although utterly belabored at others), which is more than can be said for many novels. The plot is somewhat interesting, although I do not think the characterization was well done or well sustained. Another plus is that it is a very quick read in spite of its great girth (500 pages): I completed it in about two days. Don't expect a masterpiece. Expect some passable fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Mr. Harris, you got our attention.
Review: "What still slaps the clammy flab of our submissive consciousness hard enough to get our attention?" (Hannibal, chapter 20, page 127). Mr. Harris has achieved the impossible. In today's hardbitten society, he has made us look into the eyes of Hannibal Lector and see ourselves. Just as a flashlight shines in the dark creating a pool of light to walk forward one step at a time, the mind of us all is reflected in the darkness of each character. Step slowly and cautiously as you read Hannibal. Don't look beyond the light or you might see your psyche slaughtered by the wayside.
Rating:
Summary: Average, at most
Review: Like quite a lot of Harris fans, I have known him for eleven years. Like not quite a lot of them, I loved Francis Dolarhyde, I smiled at Jame Gumb's antics, I loathed Starling, I laughed at the cartoony villain Lecter, I felt an affection for Will Graham... and I was truly interested in experiencing it all again. But this... I will not dwell into what other readers commented on: that is, Lecter. I never enjoyed this paper-thin comic "villain" (especially after seeing Hopkins overact). But of other matters - Mason Verger as the ultimate evil? Please... I wouldn't know whether to laugh in what remains of his face or extract his intestines were I to meet him. And the ending... yes, funny, and happy - from a certain point of view, obviously not the foolish majority's one - but unrealistic and NOT surrealistic - which is what it should be. Three stars for the appetizing and funny fragments, especially from the final feast - but no more.
Rating:
Summary: Harris serves up a disappointing dessert
Review: Some time ago in order to fulfill a contract with a record studio that he wanted out of, Lou Reed created Machine Metal Music. A Double Album of absolute trash. I wonder if Thomas Harris, in an effort to finally Silence his Lambs just did his version of Machine Metal Music. The book is a sequel of the movie, not the previous novel, and its clear that Harris is writing this one for visual effects only. He doesn't write in complete sentences. (ok, so that's a pet peeve of mine) He's writing a screenplay, and a bad one at that. The action is horrific, the plot thin, and the characters' actions truly make no sense. Harris chooses to forego the part of Hannibal's story told in Red Dragon. He gives him an implausible past in telling of Hannibal's long lost sister Mischa. For all the intelligence Harris has bestowed on his creation he now infuses him with the belief that time can travel backwards. He created another villian, Mason Verger, who apparently has watched too many episodes of the campy Batman series judging by the plan he has concocted to gain his revenge. The scary part about Silence of the Lambs was its plausity, the scariest part about Hannibal is that someone actually published it.
Rating: 
Summary: different
Review: As a big fan of Dragon and Silence, I thought this book had a much different feel to it. I was hoping it would go into greater detail about Lecter's past. Nontheless, it was quite enjoyable, and I especially liked the way Hannibal offed Pazzi.
Rating:
Summary: Not Enough Hannibal Lecter!
Review: You're going to wonder how I mean that, considering he's in 80% of the book. But the fact remains that Hannibal is a more interesting character when he's imprisoned then when he's free. This book lacks all the wonderful tete-a-tetes of SOTL; instead, we are forced to learn how to train pigs to eat people. Lecter as a creature of Malevolence is pure brilliance; Lecter as a free "reformed" character is boring. I personally believe Harris screwed up royally when he decided to add a character "more evil" than Hannibal. As for style, I was annoyed in SOTL with Harris' writing techniques (switches to Present tense, etc.), but the strength of the story overrode the weakness of the style. It's a shame the same can't be said about this book.
Rating:
Summary: Shockingly poor story. I hated it.
Review: I took 2 days to read this, and avoided all spoilers of the plot. I wanted to enjoy it. I didn't. The plot was poorly paced, the whole section in Italy appears to have been draped across the main story for no other reason than to show us that Lecter is a man of refinement. Harris is clearly infatuated with the character of Lecter, but in showing us his mental thought processes and getting us inside his mind, he doesn't instill the same love of Lecter in us. Rather we see that Lecter is another psychopath with a messy childhood. Compare the scene in SotL where Lecter says "You can't reduce me to a series of impulses. Nothing happened to me. *I* happened." Compare that with this travesty of a novel. No. In attempting to make us love his wet-dream of a character, he merely removes the mystique. Thoroughly awful book, but even moreso for fans of the original stories. Awful awful awful. I'd be embarressed to be Harris's editor right now. It was his job to rightly point out how bad this manuscript is. Having paid 9 million for the rights, a movie is likely. I can't see Hopkins or Foster appearing in this rubbish, but a good scriptwriter could shave off 90% of this book, change the ending and make a decent movie out of it. (A bit like how the movie The Firm with Tom Cruise was salvaged from that terribly dull book about photo-copying.)
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