Aidan Oswald-Harris’s Reviews > Hannibal Rising > Status Update

If Hannibal is offered an internship from Johns Hopkins after what he’s done in the third act, how did people not know it was him who killed and ate his victims after what he’s done in this book????

“What is left in you to love?” is a pretty great line from Lady Murasaki. This is where the book shines, continuing how the previous three books showcased evil, in particular Hannibal’s exploration on succumbing to evil. Even when pressured by Dino De Laurentiis and writing for a paycheck, Harris still has some juice in him. Keyword, some.

The plot/pacing has picked up a little now, and there is some stuff here that feels like an interesting continuation off of the previous three books’ explorations of evil (Popil’s role in WWII), but it’s too late tbh. This book exhausts me.

When Dino De Laurentiis peer-pressured Thomas Harris into writing a Hannibal Lecter origin story, Harris could’ve gone the route of telling a story that was essentially a “fuck you” to origin stories and producers/audiences who wanted a Lecter origin story (kind of like what Lana Wachowski did with The Matrix Resurrections). But instead, he gives us the most dull, apathetic, uncreative origin story possible.

Some parts of this are legitimately intriguing and have me interested in the story, like Hannibal taking the drugs that help him search in his memory of Mischa’s death.

But it’s so hard to stay focused while reading when a good portion of the story is a dull procedural. It reminds me of the section of Hannibal set in Florence (derogatory).

So dull, though there is some interesting stuff present. Chapter 30 has a small section that hit kind of hard;

"Do you think God intended to eat Isaac, and that's why he told Abraham to kill him?" Hannibal said.
"No, Hannibal. Of course not. The angel intervenes in time."
"Not always," Hannibal said.

Very dull.