Ok, I’m pissed off. Having seen Silence of the Lambs, and liking it, I figured I would pick up the sequel, Hannibal. What a piece of shit. It is so incredibly poorly written and obvious that I can’t get through it. My God, how did someone as bad as Thomas Harris get to number 1 on the NY Times best seller list.
I enjoyed it myself. I thought the first one was more suspenseful… this one seemed… well, more gory. But I still thought it was pretty good. It should be interesting what they do with the movie. NO way can they put all the nasty stuff from the book in there. The man eating pigs? GAK.
I liked it aswell . I’m sure they’ll change the ending. I can’t see hollywood showing Starling … 
I was upset by the book. I mean a book called Hannibal and not one damned thing about elephants…
My favorite part from Hannibal was where he took off his Aquamaniac costume and lit up his cigar and said, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
The very first one, Red Dragon, is better than either. Much creepier. Still gives me chills.
His grammar sucks. Loved the ending, though.
I agree with yojimbo about them changing the ending. Even though they were pretty true to the book for the first one, they won’t dare show them eating the…his… you know. No matter how good the wine was.
The part set in Florence was good, Lecter being an Italian art historian and gourmand, creeping around his manzione and so on. I enjoyed that section.
Mostly the book was just lurid pulp. Sensationalistic and wanna-be controversial. Generally uninteresting characters. And when I got to the end … well, y’know - “Oh, What-EVER!!!” (tossing book aside in disgust) what a waste. Harris is an idiot. No wonder Foster turned down that sequel. I used to wonder, now I know.
The whole thing makes me think, I need a book agent. Why should these hacks have all the fun? That should be me, blowing a HUGE advance from my publisher on some orgiastic year-long vacation in northern Italy.