Rating: 
Summary: An ending that will make you howl!
Review: The book is very well constructed and a good read. However, very few people will be satisfied with the ending (As most of these reviews seem to already indicate). Without giving anything away let me just say this... Hannibal (the character) is a monster and we cannot expect him to behave against his nature (most people accept this). But Harris has violated our collective view of Starling and this creates the anger that you see in these reviews. I can understand what he was trying to say/do but I cannot help but feel betrayed by the fact that Starling was not able to avoid (or rise above) the weakness that destroyed her own father.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm forcing myself to pick up the book and continue on!
Review: Oh, I don't know, maybe I over-anticipated after anxiously waiting all these years. With Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, those books were read in one day and re-read over the years. So far, not the same with Hannibal. Good points to this tale are the obvious research put into the life of Hannibal in Italy, but for the most part, the other characters have yet to make me give a hoot. Reading some of the other reviews here make me wonder if I'll even bother going the distance. (Oh, I will, but will probably regret it.)
Rating: 
Summary: Sad, very sad...
Review: Such a shame, after waiting for so long. Harris at his worst: no plot, ridicolous characters' personalities development and such a poor writing! Is he the same Harris who wrote Red Dragon? I doubt it!
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I really WANTED to like this book, but I don't think it lives up to the previous works in this series. What I liked best about Harris' previous work was his cool detachment from the (ghoulish and horrible) characters and events he was describing. This detachment is nowhere in evidence this time around, with the second person intervals and his obvious affection for Hannibal. When Salon Magazine synopsis for 'Hannibal' I thought it was a hoax...surely Thomas Harris wouldn't deliver such a far-fetched mess! Alas, I was wrong. I enjoyed the book, but it feels like it was written by someone trying to mimic Harris' work without possessing his gift for elegant prose and (usually) seamless story lines. A sad disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Oh Dear!What a disaster!
Review: I would like to know who MR HARRIS'S editor is because I can not blame a reclusive autor for believing he has created somthing worthwhile but surely a writer relies on his editor to just tell the truth. So let me do it. MR HARRIS this book is terrible. Your initial opening reads like a bad action movie. Your middle section is reasonable . You should have maybe based the entire book in Europe . But........oh dearie me where did you get your ending from. It is absolute tosh. I found myself laughing through the final 10 chapters and I presume this is not the reaction you were looking for. But hey you're rich and I'm not. You created RED DRAGON . Now that was good. Please buy all the copies of this book back from the general public and have them pulped. Ay Carumba Mr Harris what were you thinking about.
Rating:
Summary: A Big Disappointment!
Review: Afer reading this sequel, I feel that Mr. Harris has stripped his characters of their former selves. I am still left unsatisfied as to what makes Hannibal Lecter 'tick' and Clarice has become nothing but an empty shell. The ending was absolutely horrible and a real sell-out for what I've always thought were really interesting and moving characters. This book lacks the psychological tension and suspense from Harris' previous books. Mason Verger was boring, his sister - the typical sidekick, and throw in a couple of thugs - you have your cast of characters. The only one that added any new insight was Barney. Sorry, Mr. Harris - I think I would of been better off not reading this sequel. Compared to your other novels - this one was like having to eat bad airplane food, when you know you can enjoy an exquisite boxed lunch instead...
Rating: 
Summary: Enough is enough and too much is plenty
Review: On Page 459 of this slapstick horror fantasy, Dr. Hannibal Lector is trying to decide on a flower arrangement. Thomas Harris writes: "He could see that he had too many flowers in the room, and must add more to make it come back right again. Too many was too many, but way too many was just right." Here in a nutshell is the book's misguided formula.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was a fan of Red Dragon long before Silence of the Lambs made Hannibal Lector a household name. That book still ranks among my top ten favorite novels. I enjoyed the second in the series, although not nearly as much, but I was really looking forward to reading Hannibal. I don't know why, but I had hoped that this book was going to be the tale of how Lector became a cannibal and about his eventual capture by Will Graham. Unfortunately, very little of the dynamics behind the root of Dr. Lector's madness are revealed, and there is no mention of Will Graham anywhere (significant mention anyway). Don't you think Will would have been one of the good doctor's first victims after he was released? Still, I decided to give Harris the benefit of the doubt and continued to read. It wasn't a hard book to get through, but it spiraled so far into unbelievability, that by the end I was more than disgusted. I realize that Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lector are Harris' creations, but I felt that by the end of Hannibal he has them much too far out of character. The changes in person were pointless as well. I don't usually review books like this, but this time I felt compelled to warn people. I'm always the first in my group to read new books, and I'm telling all my friends not to bother with this one. If you have to read it, by all means wait for the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: Letdown of the decade written for major movie bucks
Review: Aside from the gramatical and punctuation errors for which there can be NO excuse in a major release like this, the story and the characters were a caricature of the people we remember from the first two novels in this sereis. To begin, I counted a minimum of three incomplete quotes, a minimum of three missing periods, myriad fragmented sentences and rampant changes of tense. These fragments and chages in tense may have been poor attempts at stylistic prose, but let us not forget we're not discussing Joyce here. This is mass market American fiction for crying out loud! Must be nice to have a deal that disallows for editing changes. The worst, though, is the insult to the characters. Not only will it be impossible for the actors to reprise their roles with any dignity in a faithfully adapted screenplay (albeit something Harris need not consider necessarily), but their actions, emotions and motivations deviate so dramatically from those in earlier appearances that we're looking at different people altogether. Darned shame, this, especially after waiting nearly a DECADE for this book. Gone, too, is some of the usual cleverness of plot as this book goes mainly for the gross-out in instances and spirals down into banal predictability.
Rating:
Summary: Harris lets go a Hannibal ham
Review: This book is so bad it makes me never want to read anything ever again. The writing is at the level of an only mildly witty third grader, the plot is clunky, to say the least, the jokes unfunny, the horror un-horrendous, and the end feeling is one of distance, complacency. If Harris's taste for olla podria really had kicked in, we might have a cultural curio on our hands. Instead what we have is a mean, insulting, biggoted, racist, homophobic book that might as well have been written by a computer. Word is that Harris has been writing HANNIBAL for the last ten years. Hey, come on, Tommy, more like TEN DAYS! The best thing about this book is the acknowledgements page, which reads like Nancy Drew on acid. Next time, Tommy Harris, maybe you can write your own book, do your own research, your own cooking. Oh, and the second best thing about this book is that, at least for now, it won't be made into a movie. But then again, if it is, the movie will be infinitely better.
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