2.5 stars, marked up

NBC’s Hannibal has spoiled me rotten.

Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham is so full of character; a sad, angry conflicted, mentally unstable little puppy dog (shut up), and Mads Mikkelsen’s Dr. Lecter is a smug, intelligent, manipulative, self-assured nutter.

Book Will Graham was nothing like his TV counterpart. We were told he was mentally unstable. We were told that his ability to understand killers took a severe toll on him. We were never shown these things. TV Will Graham is actually a pretty good profiler. Book Will Graham was kind of shit at his job – especially when you consider how badly Crawford wanted him on the case. Like, "you were this desperate for… this ? ???"

Book Hannibal was, yeah, alright, smug and narcissistic, but… not much else. He was only mentioned in, like, five pages.

This book wasn’t about Hannibal Lecter. This book wasn’t even about Will Graham. You could say that it was actually about Dolarhyde, but personally, I’d say even that’d be a stretch. And if it was actually about Dolarhyde… what was the point in calling this the first Hannibal Lecter book?

Red Dragon’s saving grace was Harris’ obvious talent with ideas. The idea for this book was great. Dolarhyde was a very good antagonist. You could sympathize with him, and simultaneously question your sanity for feeling sorry for a crazy murderer.

I didn’t hate this book, no matter what this review makes it sound like. I just didn’t particularly like it either.

You can read my full review here