HANNIBAL RISING (Thomas Harris) - January 27/07

Though the latter half of the novel is actually pretty good - what with the whole Man on Fire except with Hannibal Lecter thing - Hannibal Rising is a slow-paced, convoluted, and overwritten piece of work that doesn't offer much insight into Lecter's mindset. Harris spends an inordinate amount of time focused on the various Nazis that ate Lecter's sister, to the extent that it becomes virtually impossible to follow everything that happens. Stripped of about 200 pages, the book probably would have been pretty good. The movie will undoubtedly be much better. ** out of ****