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Hannibal

Hannibal

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I got a 50% discount and still felt cheated.
Review: A tedious, plodding, dissapointing read

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Characters are so changed that the entire book fails.
Review: I love the anticipation of the arrival of my favorite novelists' new books. But, Harris's new novel disturbed me on several levels. Harris writes well, even if his ever-changing point of view is sometimes confusing, yet this type of confusion can be overcome. It is his character development which changes the remarkable, even admirable character of Clarice to amoral, and the monstrous character of Hannibal to understandable, even acceptable, which changes this from an interesting read to a disturbing read. If a novelist is going to write only for himself, there is no obligation to anyone but himself, but if he is writing for an audience who trusts him, then a novelist has some obligation not to take already well-developed characters and change them to such an extent they are then unrecognizable. It is even more abhorrent to become so in love with your characters that you try to excuse unexcusable behavior. Hannibal is a monster, even if he is a human monster. It is fine to expose his human side, but to use the human side to excuse the monster is unacceptable. I left this book hating it not so much for the horrid characterizations, but more for the attempt to take monstrous actions and ideas and humanize them. Violence, much less cannibalism is ugly, not beautiful. If Hannibal is a monster, do not try to make him anything else. And as terrible as life is to people sometimes, the terrible events can not be used to excuse the kind of violence of which Hannibal shows himself capable. This novel's characterizations attempt to prove otherwise and because of this, the novel fails.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: not a disappointment
Review: by these reviews, i gather that Hannibal is not so popular a sequel, but i thought it truly excellent. I had extremely high hopes about the book before reading it, and was not let down. ANYONE who loved Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs should buy this one!!!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Quite a bit of it is good, but the rest is oh-so-bad
Review: In parts of "Hannibal", Thomas Harris does what he has done very well in the past: tells a compelling story. For about the first half of the book, I read almost compulsively -- I couldn't put the book down.

Then several aspects of the novel began to tell me that, at the end, I would find the book a dissapointment. The new "villains" of the book were resolutely one-dimensional; none of them ever did anything surprising. An attempt at explaining what drove Dr. Lecter ended up, in the end, taking away quite a bit of the mystique of his character. He was much more interesting as a non-human embodiment of evil, as several people in the two previous books had termed him, in one way or another. And the final thing was the realization that Harris was changing the characters -- not for reasons of growth, but so they could fit into the machinery of the plot.

And, oh, the ending. (I read the Salon "article", reprinted at CNN, which manages to give away the next-to-final plot twist IN THE SUBHEADER. If I hadn't stopped there, there would have been no point in actually reading the book, as it gives away most of the rest of it anyways.)

Please note, I get the ending; I understand the ending, better than quite a few of the people who have left reviews here. It's quite obvious what has happened, and it is all about control. It just seems like an ultimate betrayal for things to have turned out like that. And, as a capper for an unrealistically-plotted two-dimensional plot like we are served in most of the rest of "Hannibal", it makes the whole experience very very unsatisfying indeed.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not "Red Dragon" or "Silence of the Lambs", but not bad
Review: A good read until the ending. That was just too much to swallow (pun intended).

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Okay read. Better wait for paperback. Ending is terrible.
Review: I was really looking forward to reading this book. Too bad! So many things in life are anti-climatic. It was gruesome, the details actually made me lose my appetite. Yet, there was something very important missing. Harris, such a connoisseur of food understands the nuances necessary for a fine meal. He has wonderful nuances in this book. But what is wonderful seasonings without the actually food? e.g. Where is the plot? Why is there no character development? Why does the reader not care what happens? I cringe to think of a movie being made of this book. I hope Anthony Hopkins does not agree to play Hannibal again. It would be such a waste. The ending! The worse thing EVER! Completely, disastrously implausible. This is the true horror of the book, reading this author trash his characters this way. Why would Harris ever think the ending would work? I gave the book 2 stars because it was not the worse thing I ever read. If your really curious, borrow it from a friend.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Think, people, think!
Review: It occurs to me that the people who label this book "a huge disappointment" could never truly be satisfied with anything other than a regurgitation of the "Silence of the Lambs/Red Dragon" pattern. That is, a hideous serial killer is turning people into chop suey, the cops are absolutely stumped and so must turn to the evil genius Hannibal Lecter for some helpful/unhelpful insight into the killer's pathology. Instead, Harris did something completely new and startling. He humanized Hannibal, made him fallible, made him something very like Adam from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the last ten years, I haven't read anything better or more fun than the chapter in which Lecter is trapped on the airplane with screaming babies and a brat who demands the doctor's "liverwurst sandwich." Has it occurred to anyone else that the ending is a dream? Hannibal's dream? That doesn't make it any less real, you know. Or horrifying.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Waited with bated breath... let it out with sigb of regret.
Review: If you ignore Harris's previous works, the ending would probably work for you. However, having not had the pleasure of removing the frontal lobe from my brain... I read the first two books and felt Harris betrayed his characters. Please God Please don't make a movie. Or, at least wait until I get the lobotomy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I fun read. I really enjoyed the story.
Review: If you like a fun ride with a bunch of low life sick demented folk, you'll love this book. Not since 'The Stand' have I been so engrossed in a book.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This book sucked
Review: Save your money people. A ridiculous story, lame boring characters and possibly the worst ending I've ever had the displeasure of reading. I hope to God they don't waste the time and effort making this crap into a movie


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