Rating: 
Summary: Five stars until the ending!
Review: I found this book to be great up until the ending. I do have to give Harris credit for his creative and twisted ending. When I first put the book down I felt great disapointment but now that some time has passed I am beginninmg to agree more so with the ending that he choose. After reading some of the previous reviews on this site here are my comments: Harris is a great writer people and there is no need to criticize his work so harshly. I think that he composed a wonderful sequal although it could have been better. Worth reading for sure
Rating: 
Summary: Nerve-wracking, thrilling, compelling, unpredictable
Review: I bought this because I am a huge fan of SOTL and Thomas Harris. I can't decide if it is Anthony Hopkins or Dr. L. who fascinates me so much. No matter...I found the book nearly impossible to put down. Very rarely am I actually emotionally shaken by a book. I was OK until the final chapters, then....WHEW!! Many people will be disappointed in the ending...but no one could ever admit to foreseeing how it would turn out. Too many novels are predictable...this one most definitely is not.. The sheer evil of the characters is so frightening, it makes one wonder if the world indeed has people like that in it. And what is so scary is knowing that it most likely does. Part of me can't wait for the movie... even though I don't see how the screenplay could ever be true to the book without an NC-17 rating at best. Loved it!
Rating: 
Summary: A magnificent journey through the palace of the mind!
Review: Insatiable reading... from beginning to end Harris disrupts our sense of good and evil and throws the equilibrium of reality into disarray. That there exists a evil greater than Lechter, that Lechter's evil transforms into a twisted heroics and that Starling comes to embrace that which she has dedicated herself to terminate - this is Harris delivering the reader beyond the bounds of formulaic prose. The reader savors the words, the journey through the palace of the mind, as Lechter savors a white truffle - rich deep and amazingly complex. This is remarkable storytelling.
Rating:
Summary: He's still got it...
Review: I experienced "Hannibal" via abridged audiobook, and I can hardly wait to read the whole thing. While not as engaging as SOTL, this book is great, and I enjoyed it immensely.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Like the other Harris fans, I have been anxiously awaiting this story for years. Like the other fans, I wanted to love it. I expected to love it. But, loath as I am to admit it, I do not love it. The characters I met in this new novel are not the ones I knew from the previous ones. They are strangers. Their behavior does not follow from what we know of them. The book seems to have been hastily thrown together, which is strange considering the length of time since Silence. Typos suggest it wasn't even proofread with much care. Whatever the case, I will always remain in awe of Harris for The Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs.
Rating:
Summary: excellent with fava beans and a nice chianti...
Review: Lesbian bodybuilders! Faceless meatpacking heirs! Italian porn directors! Against this cast of supporting characters, even Hannibal Lecter can seem a little pedestrian. However, in spite of the fact that his, shall we say, appetites, are rationalized and his latent menace diminished by his daily contact with humanity, the emminent Doctor still remains a presence that exists outside of humanity. The novel screams to be made into a movie. The imagery that cuts through the novel, from the constant oscilations of a swimming eel, to an elaborate moviemaking apparatus involving a large roccoco mirror, to the bizzare life support mechanism of a central character (including a monacle designer, a la Clockwork Orange, to continually moisten a lidless eye) screams to be interpreted on the screen. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing... Were I to give away the ending, it would be a great disservice. Were I to summarize it, it would make no sense. However, when taken as result of two novel's worth of cumulative momentum, it achieves a kind of sickening result that doesn't even stem from the gore that puctuates the rest of the book. A kind of pshcyoanalytic shudder...
Rating:
Summary: The ending gave me a big "HUH???"
Review: Harris pretty much throws you in the action of catching an enigmatic killer by a sick & demented victim, and spits you out by the ending. Part of me thinks that it was Harris' intention of totally disturbing the reader with its totally gothic & unpredicatable ending, and the other half may be just to let the reader realize that the whole "Hannibal Lecter" hype is no more than a big joke. Harris may have taken too much hallucinatory mushrooms by the time he wrote the conclusion. I really wanted to like this book since it was quite expensive (even if it was 50% off). What a waste. I couldn't even admit to my girlfriend how much I thought the novel wasted my time not to mention my enthusiasm.
Rating:
Summary: "Hannibal" ending leaves bad taste in mouth
Review: After finishing "Hannibal," I was struck by a desire to find Thomas Harris and demand a refund. The ending of the book was easily the most disappointing, annoying, and baffling I've ever read. Was Harris trying to drive away loyal readers? Perhaps he'd been so pestered over the last 11 years to write the sequel, that he decided to get his revenge by concocting such an amazingly bad ending? I don't know. Maybe he grew tired of the book or simply wrote himself into a corner. Was it a weak effort at black humor? Who knows. In any event, it was a sad end to an otherwise highly engrossing book in particular, and trilogy in general.
Rating: 
Summary: I wanted a refund, and I didn't even pay for it
Review: Ouch. Although I think fans of the series should read this book if they're interested, I would *seriously* recommend borrowing it or waiting for the paperback. What I've loved about Harris's previous work is that he's an extremely intelligent, always surprising writer; I had no expectations for this novel as far as plot goes, but silly me, I *was* expecting it to be competently written. Instead, I got ridiculous character inconsistency, and I'm not even talking about the idiotic ending, which I can only assume had to be a joke. (To a much lesser degree, I had the same problem with the screenplay for "Silence": They changed details about the characters that made certain lines nonsensical, but left those lines in.) While everyone discusses in tones of awe how Lecter's genius at hiding himself will make him near impossible to catch, the genius himself is busy being instantly found by everyone, everywhere he goes, by doing every single thing people think he will do. I got pathetic Psych 101 rationales: Lecter is evil because of his traumatic childhood (awww...); Starling figures all black people (her best friend included) will hate her because, in the line of duty, she shot a homicidal drug dealer who shot her first (because as we all know, every African-American alive holds homicidal drug dealers in near-holy reverence). When my friend lent me this book, he said, "Don't get too excited." I said, "Oh, it couldn't be that bad!" I chuckle bitterly now, looking back at my innocence. I could go on for pages, but most of it has been said before. If you, as a reader, expect more than over-the-top gore and pretty descriptions of art and truffles from a book, you need to look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: If you're looking for a formula horror novel, look elsewhere
Review: It seems most readers are disappointed that this novel doesn't follow the standard horror formula. One reviewer complains that Starling and Lecter make a "360 degree turn" from Silence of the Lambs. Do the math! Don't come looking for a rote good-defeats-evil horror novel. Harris shows us that Lecter and Starling are multi-dimensional characters and not always what we'd expect. Unfortunately, while Harris is willing to probe depths and dimensions of Lecter and Starling he does not extend this courtesy to Mason and Krendler, who are pretty much cookie cutter bad guys. Here Harris follows the Hollywood formula of dehumanizing his villains so the reader looks forward to their demise. An engaging read with a refreshing twist at the end. Harris intends to disturb his reader and succeeds.
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