Hannibal

Rating:
Summary: A Real Page-Turner!
Review: Hannibal is one of those books that you read in a mere few days at most, a thrilling, rollar-coaster ride of a book that keeps you guessing and on the edge--and may scare you a bit. Hannibal Lector is an intriguing character, at the same time heroic and repulsive, just and vengeful, polite and disgusting. Harris allows the reader to peer through Lector's eyes and as the world sees him. The book even has an amazing ability through its characters to entice readers to perhaps privately reveal a side of the "raw" self that exists in all of us, even if only for a few pages. I read this book in two days and could not put it down. The ending is a fantastic climax to a crescendo book! Harris has done it again. I hope that the Lector saga continues!

Rating:
Summary: EXTREMELY Disappointing!!!
Review: I thorougly enjoyed "Silence of the Lambs" and "Red Dragon", so I was excited to read "Hannibal". What a HUGE disappointment!!! The previous novels I read until all hours of the night, and couldn't put them down. With "Hannibal", it was all I could do to keep reading to see what happens to the monster. The series of events in this novel were completely predictable and Harris' emphasis seemed to be on the gore rather than the story and characters. While his previous novels had great cliffhanger endings, the ending to "Hannibal" left room for a next novel, at best! The difference is, I won't purchase the next novel! I was VERY generous giving the book 2 stars!

Rating:
Summary: Horror, Indeed!
Review: What an infuriating book to read. In the beginning of this book I found the characters hard to distinguish. Harris introduces too many fuzzy characters at once and leaves no clues for his readers to distinguish the important players from the extras. Having cleared that obstacle, one that stunted a few of my friends' endeavor, I moved on to Florence with Harris and Hannibal. It was in Italy that I again felt the rage building in my chest. I am not an unintelligent woman but I had much difficulty in following Hannibal around Italy and understanding the locations, scene setups and culture of the characters. Spare me the Italian lessons I wanted a clearer story to follow. And the ending!! What could be more horrifying than that! Tsk, tsk, tst, Mr Harris, I don't agree. Aside from these points that stung my eyes with the serverity of Carlo's cattle prod I can still manage to find some praise for Mr Harris. The atrophied monster, Mason Verger, is one of the finest madmen that I have had the shameful pleasure of encountering in quite a while. Overall I find this book incredibly hard to read however, between the Italian quotes and the descriptions of wine that I doubt I will ever have the pleasure to taste, there is an interesting glimpse into the eye of a madman. Please Mr Harris try to stick more to the flesh of your stories and leave out some of the garnish.

Rating:
Summary: Too Hollywood
Review: I was very disappointed with Harris' latest. I don't like what Harris did with Clarice's character. And when I didn't think it could get any worse, I got to the ending. I can see why Jodie Foster didn't want anything to do with the movie!! I felt like I was reading a screenplay, this novel was "too Hollywood" for me.

Rating:
Summary: This may Shatter You
Review: In the 3rd installment of the Lecter plot, Thomas Harris gives us something to challenge us with: the dynamics are not good guy versus bad guy, more on the lines of bad guy versus bad guy who has the help of a good guy. The ending will leave you dazed, possibly. It is obvios, even from a cursory glance, that a truckload of time and effort went into the making on this thing- it shows in the developing relationship of Lecter and Starling. Some may be horrified at just how much that relationship blossoms; as for myself, I was in love too. Approach it with dread, sieze it with awe- it is a rewarding reading expierience that will leave you thinking and mesmerized. Have a good day, if after reading this that is possible.

Rating:
Summary: Five stars, you got to be kidding me!
Review: I bought this book because I had read Black Sunday and wanted to experience the same feeling of suspence. No comparisons. Story apart, "Hannibal" is just poorly written. This book is simply terrible. Harris has no sense of pause or suspense; most chapters cut off at the wrong time. In addition, the dialogues are extremely poor, and the characters are shallow as shallow is the book. I love to read, so long as the material is readable. My advice? Do not waste your precious time and money to buy and read Hannibal.

Rating:
Summary: A Clear Money Grab by Thomas!
Review: In my opinion, Thomas Harris wrote the book on the Thriller Genre, literally, with "Silence" and it still stands as the book I hold all other thrillers up against. I was very disappointed to learn that there was a sequel, more disappointed to learn that the screenplay rights were sold for an obscene amount of money BEFORE the novel was even written, and was the most disappointed with the actual result.

This book lacks all of the heart of Silence and even the Red Dragon; stories where the real terror was written into the dialogues between the characters whom you cared about and written in between the lines. The gory details acted as filler which supplemented the implicit terror and drove home the evilness of the acts of the killer(s). It was written in such a way that you almost grew to like the monster named Hannibal and really invested yourself in Agent Starling.

This book came up short in the heart area and was overdone in the gory details. Agent Starling who????????? What a disappointing 180 turn in her character. They were two completely different characters, they just happened to share a name from one book to the other. The attempts to explain Hannibal Lecter's childhood traumas were very weak and took much away from the mystique of his character. Much of what makes up the horror/thriller genre is the unknown. Not knowing what made Lecter tick was part of that character's heart in "Silence".

But I must say in Harris' defense, that it is well-written overall, which makes it readable. And like many who read the thriller genre, my morbid curiosity compelled me to read scenes like Starling's dinner party (if you read it, you'll know the scene I'm referring to). it's not hard to see why Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins skipped the roles for the movie sequel. I might skip the movie sequel as well.

Rating:
Summary: Informative and Interesting
Review: Hannibal, by Thomas Harris, is a good read. Harris includes some fascinating and educating information about the city of Florence, which is one of the main reasons why I personally like the book. The plot of Hannibal is stable and well thought out, but is not as fast-paced as two other novels by Thomas Harris, The Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. In Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter, a mad man who plays a part in both The Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, is living relatively peacefully by himself in Florence, Italy. The story's plot begins to thicken when two different people, with two different motives, enter into a quest to find him, each wanting to get to Hannibal ahead of the other. The main character of this novel would have to be Dr. Hannibal Lecter, but Clarice Starling and Mason Verger come in as close seconds. Dr. Lecter is portrayed throughout most of this book as a highly intelligent man who is just very particular in his needs and doesn't seem to be bothered by stepping on, or killing, those unfortunate people who happen to be in his way. The ending to this book took me by surprise because it was entirely different than I had guessed it would be, however, it is consistant with Hannibal's character. Hannibal Lecter constantly does things that people normally don't do, like eat human livers and/or brains, so the ending, which confused me at first, actually does makes sense. After reading this book, I would love to travel to Florence. Before reading Hannibal, I didn't know much about the city of Florence, but now, after learning something about Florence's interesting history, I think that it would be a great place to visit.

Rating:
Summary: Great Cold Weather Book!!!
Review: For those nights when the weather keeps you in, when a fire and a good book sound like the best way to spend the evening....use this book to start the fire and then go find a good book to read!! If you do decide to work your way through this one don't finish it....this book has a few pretty intriguing story lines but doesn't deliver. It almost seems as if there were two authors, Harris seems to have started the book, whoever finished it should be just that....finished!! I finished it out of morbid curiosity and then gave the book the burial it deserved....the garbage. Too bad I don't have a fireplace...it would have made great kindling!!! I give it negative five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Harris gave up in the end ...
Review: Great book until the last 50 pages -- then I regretted starting it at all!