Rating: 
Summary: This is a good book-- for me to poop on!
Review: Harris, Harris, what have you done to the characters from "Silence of the Lamb?" This book is so bad, taking more time out of my life other than telling you not to waste your time is like pooping on poop!
Rating:
Summary: There's no excuse for this book
Review: This is one of the most grotesque books I've ever read. It's filled with characters and situations that are disgusting. The ending is not believable. It doesn't even deserve one star.
Rating: 
Summary: VISCERAL, MASTERFUL--SCARY AS ALL HELL!
Review: As an active status member of the Horror Writer's Association, I am not a virgin when it comes to reading or writing horror. However, when one is in the presence of the Grandmaster of Gore, one becomes sufficiently humbled. Nobody does it better than Thomas Harris. In this third outing of Dr. Lecter, the reader is treated to terrors to roll over on the tongue--a book that will sink its teeth--into you! You may never "eat Italian" again. (At least not anything with a red sauce). Stop whatever you're doing, and buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: Better than You've Heard
Review: Please ignore the negative reviews this book has gotten in the press from the politically correct and those who just don't get it. This is an instant classic. It's a mesmerizing meditation on corruption and what really *is* evil in an absurd world. Yes, it's very dark, but you will be stunned by the wisdom you find when you come through it. Like the best fiction, it rearranges the way you look at things.
Rating:
Summary: Puh-leeze
Review: No doubt Jodie Foster passed on the role when she got to the end of the book and it described Clarice's hairdo as a "platinum helmut." What drug was Harris on when he wrote the ending? No way can you change a belief and value system by dangling a few baubles and a plate of foie gras under their nose as Harris implies in the book. This one was a real yawn.
Rating:
Summary: This book was like a car wreck...
Review: I knew it would be bad and I would be thoroughly disgusted with myself for bothering to look, but I couldn't resist. Everything I'd heard about how bad it was *made* me want to read it, just so I could see for myself how bad it really was.I won't bother to give away the ending, but suffice it to say that if it were mentioned here, you might feel the need to read it yourself just to see for yourself that he really had the audacity. I think Harris' secret plot here was to thoroughly disgust the reader with the characters so that he never has to write them again. After all, he's a made man now, no need to visit with ghosts of the past, especially if nobody wants to see or hear or read them ever again after this ten-car-pile-up of a travesty.
Rating: 
Summary: What a horrible way to silence the lambs, Clarice.
Review: Great book...until the end. Lame, twisted, stupid, rushed, out-of-ideas, out-of-character ending. Drugs and hypnosis? I think it would have worn off before the "Buenos Aires, three years later..." Jodie Foster ain't reprising her role not because the paycheck is too small, but because her character goes off the deep end. Good for Foster. I heard they're changing the ending for the movie anyway. Let's hope it's better than the ending in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Weakest of the trilogy...
Review: ...but still good of its kind. Thomas Harris is very good at what he does, but I was a bit surprised that he so obviously wrote this novel as a screenplay in so many parts. There are lazy, lazy descriptions that could have been taken straight from a film script, and of course Hannibal was snatched up and is being made. In this third entry we get more of Hannibal Lecter. We even get a background on him, which I don't mind but which has caused some major disappointment from fans. I think that Harris fudged the timeline a bit though. Silence of the Lambs appeared in 1988, the film in 1991. In Hannibal, we learn that Lecter has been free for 7 years, yet everything points to the film taking palce in 1999 or 2000. He has also made Lecter almost superhuman in terms of intelligence and other ability. And Clarice Starling, who disappears for long periods in this overlong novel, seems like a tired creation, as if Harris became sick of her personality, which was never well developed to begin with. And no mention of Will Graham of Red Dragon, he being perhaps the authority on Lecter? Well, it will be interesting to see how the film presents the ending, which is really a bit far out. Hopefully though, this is the last of the Hannibal Lecter books. Until Harris is offered another 75 billions dollars for a novel and the rights.
Rating:
Summary: Well written book is a mirror of humanity.
Review: Thomas Harris' book Hannibal is incredibly well-written and interesting! Nobody I know who read it was able to put it down! Absolutely the best of Harris' four novels! It's interesting to me that many reviewers didn't like the book! Was this perhaps that it hit too close to home? Aww...perhaps they were brought up to believe that a murderer or any deviant is a monster. How safe to feel that since Hannibal and other serial killers are monsters, I can't possibly be anything like them. They were "disappointed" in the fact that the reasons were given for Dr. Lecter's insanity. "We want him to be an inhuman monster! We don't want him to be a human being! We don't to understand, to feel compassion! We don't want him to be able to feel! " The society that we currently live in doesn't want to hear the "psycho-babble" or psychiatic "rubbish" because they are more comfy thinking that they are on a higher moral plane. That they are regular human people and murderers and serial killers are evil monsters not even resembling the humans that they kill. Oh well, they can believe whatever they want to believe, the facts are: Serial killers and murderers and other criminals are normal people just like you and me, they've had good experiences in life, just like you and me, and they've oftentimes had awful things happen in their life just like you and me. The difference is that the awful things in their life affect them in an involuntary way that make killing ok. People don't want to face the truth: Most serial killers and murderers become serial killers and murderers because of society's negligence. We don't take care of, or protect our children properly, we fight wars, we allow horrific atrocities. Some children when exposed to awful evil, become awfully evil, others don't. Why? Who knows? In the United States, we'd rather kill the grown-up children in jail for commiting crimes, than prevent these crimes by protecting the children who will grow up to be the criminals of the next generation. What a backward society! The book Hannibal shows Western "civilization" and the way they handle crime to be complete absolute bunk! This is a novel of humanity, not cannibalism! It doesn't display all that's wrong with Western Culture by glorifying cannibalism, murder, and lawlessness, it simply shows that as long as we won't practice justice and mercy there will be criminals who will commit crimes in the name of justice. If Jodie Foster and all the other Girl Scouts out there want Clarice Starling to remain a Girl Scout then they should read Pollyanna and the like, this is the real world, glass ceiling, response to injustice and all.
Rating:
Summary: Movie Script
Review: I am willing to bet that Thomas Harris had Hollywood in mind when he wrote this book. Why else would he so completely alter the personalities of EVERY character in his book. Mr. Harris you created some excellent characters in "The Silence of the Lambs." They were engaging, flawed and, in the case of Hannibal, truly frightning. In this book you have made them cardboard cutouts that will look good on a movie screen. I have never been so disappointed in a writer before (and I read often!). I hope that if you choose to write a new novel you will not consider it's marketability and stick to what you do best.
|
