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Geophyrd
26-Dec-2006, 12:56 PM
Hannibal Rising is not Thomas Harris' finest work but it is not a terrible novel. In fact, if the name was changed from Hannibal Lector to John Smith, it would have been a good (if a little pedestrian) thriller, the birth of a monster amid the squalor of monsters. With the death of his sister in the German occupation, Hannibal Lector is reborn as something other less than purely human. He is missing parts of himself, parts of ego and empathy that were burned out in the inhumanity of several men. Little did I know that the Lectors held a Baronette's title and castle. But as the book launches, it is lost fairly soon. In fact, everything is nearly lost.

In the rest of Hannibal Rising, Hannibal strives to regain parts of his life. His brilliance at mathematics, his intense curiousity, his inherited castle and stolen art, all gone to the winds. Throughout the book, the theme is reclamation. You want him to find these things. You cheer him on. And suddenly you realize that you are cheering the monster, that your sympathy is misplaced and the book is trite, a flimsy story dressed in rich gothic veneer.

I find myself surprised at the paupicity of some of my favorites writers' works. Some writer, like Stephen King or Larry Niven, can produce a vast trove of ideas and stories. Some of them are great, some are less so but all are at least interesting.
Other writers, like Thomas Harris or Vincent Patrick (isn't it time we had another Vincent Patrick novel?) all write very little. But, boy, do their works shine! They're diamonds that show up only rarely and then they captivate!

Harris' works, Black Sunday, Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs are some of the best thriller novels ever written. They are remarkable for what they convey and the ratio of word to thought has never been closer to one.

But with Hannibal and now Hannibal Rising, Mr. Harris seems to have taken his narrative in a more traditional (boring) direction. His characters don't sing. His violence is bloody and nearly unnecessary. His attempts at explaining motivations seem ham handed. I'm not sure I needed to know about Hannibal's sister. What made him such a tasty damned villian was that I knew very little about him except that, unrepentent, dressed in chains and locking within a maximum security prison, he was still the most dangerous man I've ever read about.

In this novel, we have a protagonist but not a hero. He's not an antihero either and in that, the novel fails.

I wish Mr. Harris would direct his writing towards something other than Hannibal Lector. He is a truely gifted writer, but I believe he's spent much too much time crafting a tale that is not his finest. What he's written is a pretty good novel but there's no pretending its a diamond.

capncnut
26-Dec-2006, 06:52 PM
I will probably get this as I have read all the others in the series. Thanks for the review man. :)

Geophyrd
26-Dec-2006, 08:03 PM
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