Rating: 
Summary: 6/8 4.54 pm ET..Bought the book 8.00 am just finished.
Review: First impression not up to Silence but need to think more! More violent, less subtle. Will write more soon.
Rating:
Summary: Hannibal had a traumatic childhood
Review: Hmmm, what I've said before about chianti and fava beans? Still tops on the menu. In the long awaited sequel to Silence of the lambs, everybody's favorite serial killer is back. Living in Florence as the well named Dr. Fell*, babysitting a gorgeous palazzo, using his talents to overcome his many adversaries and his always subtle way, finally getting the girl. Harris has made Hannibal Lector a little easier to understand, with details of his traumatic childhood. One can finally see where he gets his unhealthy eating habits. There are turns of plot with a former victim and his pets that will make many readers want to put down the book. This is strong stuff even for Lector fans. The author also casually does away with established characters that readers may have grown fond of. (in other words, don't look too far for Jack Crawford!, sorry Scott Glenn) The bottom line is that no matter how charming, how charismatic, Hannibal Lector is a monster, perhaps even as Stephen King implied in his New York Times review of the book, the definitive monster of our time. A happy ending? Well it ended. I don't think Thomas Harris is much on happy endings. As another well known cannibal, Sawney Bean of Scotland might have put it, it will give you a "cauld grue". 6 fingers up! *I do not like you Dr Fell (anonymous nursery rhyme)
Rating: 
Summary: Humbug!
Review: Thomas Harris wrote THIS? Oh God... this is a blatant romance and melodrama, served as a splatterpunk dish with a glass of gore. It does not approach the mastery of Red Dragon. It is not even as good as Silence of the Lambs - it is simply a bad novel. Eleven years of waiting for THIS?????
Rating: 
Summary: The 3000 Day Book
Review: From the Author of Black Sunday comes his own "Hannibal Lecter" trilogy: Red Dragon, Silence Of the Lambs and Hannibal. I have read the book, and although I am quite familiar with his other two books, the new culprit was still quite pleasantly suprising. Again, your world is complelely changed as the master, Thomas Harris, rips the fabric of Hannibal Lecter that he so carefully weaved with the previos two books. Masterful, suspenseful, satisfying. I dig it, totally.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: This book was smashing! It's the most comprehensive history I've read on Hannibal and his campaign to defeat the Romans. The book starts with the early history of the two ancient superpowers, Rome and Carthage, and details how and why they inevitably came to confrontation and conflict. The author's coverage of Hannibal's boyhood is quite magnificent. And, of course, Hannibal's subsequent rise, early success, and eventual defeat were absolutely brilliant! I can't wait to read Harris' next book, which is rumored to about Attila the Hun.
Rating: 
Summary: Baroque and disturbing, it's probably for fans only
Review: I finished HANNIBAL last night, and can recommend it ONLY to those who've followed the series from the beginning. Harris has a strikingly different agenda this time around: to take us inside Hannibal's mind, and the results are mixed. I was a little disappointed to have his creator pin a backstory on Hannibal that rationalizes this monster's sociopathy. (Hannibal himself would disapprove, and does so in SILENCE when someone tries to do it.) However, more often than not, the journeys into the mind of the madman and his "memory palace" are exhilarating... as are many of Harris' more baroque excursions. The book isn't plotted so much as ornamented, and that ornamentation is wonderful. Harris' earlier terse and morbidly funny prose is a little grander, a little more ambitious this time around, and it gives the book an apocalyptic feel: as if Harris is raising the bar on the thriller. If you go into the novel expecting this -- and understanding that there's no serial killer mystery to be unravelled, and very little forensic work performed -- you should enjoy it. But be forewarned that you'll need a stronger stomach than in RED DRAGON and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. HANNIBAL surpasses them in on-stage violence... and dishes up a handful of concluding chapters that are among the most disturbing you'll ever read. Some fans will be angered by HANNIBAL's sublimely surreal ending... but I liked it. It's a fitting conclusion to the novel's strange ride.
Rating:
Summary: I found this book hard to digest but am glad I read it.
Review: I was somewhat disappointed in this book although I am glad I read it. I anxiously awaited it. I did not like what went on in the ending chapters. I know The Silence of the Lambs dealt with horrific occurences but this one surpassed my tolerence. It actually made me queasy although I definately will go see the movie. Go figure. I can't comment on any specifics as to not ruin the book for others.
Rating:
Summary: Our latest wake-up call: Time to "SHRINK THE ENVELOPE"!
Review: The propagation of previously unacceptable concepts and/or practices is referred to as "pushing the envelope". This has become the mantra, especially in the arts, without regard to the benefits or consequences to a society that result. This book is the latest illustration of the slippery slope upon which we slide. Mr. Harris evidently determined that to top his previous efforts, we need to visualize a man being fed his own brains and other such activities - and this is what is now "mainstream/best-seller" material! One can only sigh at the prospect that awaits us when Mr. Harris (or the next "artist") tries to go beyond these images in the sacred pursuit of the larger envelope. "Silence of the Lambs", while having it's moments of depravity, was at least partially based on the real life story of Ed Gien who was also the inspiration for "Psycho". The psychological profile(s) necessary for such stories provided redeeming value to these efforts. "Hannibal" can claim no such redemption and has obviously been produced to either express Mr. Harris' personal interests or, from a free market perspective, because Mr. Harris perceives us as not having enough depraved negative images to absorb. If the first reason is true, he has my sympathies; if it's the second, I feel sorry for us all. That's why after reading a synopsis, I returned this book as soon as it arrived. I refuse to help finance (and thus encourage) this garbage. My impulse to keep it and give it to a friend as a gift lasted long enough to realize that no one I care about should have their sensibilities so taxed for such little reward. Besides having been steadily "dumbed-down", our society has concurrently been coarsened by such pornography. We are deluged with these and other images in our modern religion of pop culture. The average kid on the street can recite on demand the name of every Star Wars character and much of their dialogue ...and when Jay Leno interviews several members of a newly graduating college class and asks each one ..."how many moons does the earth have", he received the answers: "Nine"... "Five"... and "I don't know, I didn't take astronomy". We are reaping what we've sown- and the harvest that awaits us will be future leaders and managers who'll know all about eating one's own brains- and from this book, it's obvious that Mr. Harris has done first-hand research. SHRINK THE ENVELOPE: the mind you save may be ours!
Rating: 
Summary: Exciting right up to the final fizzle.
Review: I enjoyed Red Dragon & Silence of the Lambs, which stand as classics of the genre. This one starts off about how and where you'd expect, with Hannibal on the run and Clarisse in some career difficulty. The book reads well, with plot twists and character development in the B+ range. HOWEVER: BEWARE OF THE ENDING. Shockingly out of character, jarringly out of context, it could enrage you as it did yours truly. The last 20 or so pages made me ask myself: "For *THIS* I spent money !?!!!?" Caveat Emptor, folks, this one turns into a huge dog.
Rating:
Summary: Harris gives us another gourmet taste of Hannibal Lecter
Review: Thomas Harris' third novel featuring Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter once again relegates him to the role of supporting character. However, sating the reader's appetites for the charming anti-hero of these novels, Harris has wisely made him the focus of the FBI investigators. Clarice Starling is back as the central investigator, but rather than a student investigator, she is a trained field operative whose career has been subject to the whims of the higher ups in the government. Also returning are Jack Crawford and Paul Kandler as two of Starling's bosses. Add to the plot the character of Mason Vergers, Lecter's sixth victim, and the only one to survive, whose taste for vengeance compells him to issue an enormous bounty for Dr. Lecter - alive or dead. HANNIBAL is a great adventure. I read it through in one 16 hour sweep. While on some levels it lacks the psychological intensity of the former novels, it does focus on Lecter's background, his relationship with his sister, and his need for family. It continues to develop Starling's psychological profile, including her relationship with her father and with Ardelia Mapp, another FBI agent. Several times throughout the novel, Harris satirizes the American taste for breaking news, and often has the arrival of the media timed with the arrival of FBI on a crime scene. He also allows the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal to play in the background and sets HANNIBAL in a specific time and place. Rumors abound that the movie rights were sold for $10 million - the top price ever paid for a novel. With Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster bigger names and stars now than when SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was filmed, the price tag for this movie will reach halfway to $100 million dollars before a foot of film is shot. But it will be made into a film, and we will eagerly await its scrumptious film release.
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