Hannibal Rising
- 344
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Hannibal Rising” gives Hannibal Lecter a past: a dark revenge story that begins in the Second World War. Some readers praise the writing and its more emotional tone, though they can find its villains too monstrous to leave any moral doubt. Others feel it sits apart from the earlier books or that revenge explains Lecter too neatly. It is the last of Harris’s four Lecter novels and the first in the story’s own order.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Hannibal Rising is a psychological horror novel by American author Thomas Harris, published in 2006. It is the fourth and final novel in Harris's series and the first novel in chronological order of the novels centered around Dr. Hannibal Lecter, serving as a prequel to his three previous books. The novel was released with an initial printing of at least 1.5 million copies and met with a mixed critical response. Audiobook versions have also been released, with Harris reading the text. The novel was adapted, with a script by Harris himself, into a film of the same name in 2007. Producer Dino De Laurentiis implied around the time of the novel's release that he had coerced Harris into writing it under threat of losing control over the Hannibal Lecter character, accounting for the perceived diminished quality from Harris' previous books.
Reading order · Hannibal Lecter
Full order & progress →- Red DragonStart here
7.97.9 / 10 - The Silence of the Lambs
8.38.3 / 10 - Hannibal
7.37.3 / 10 - Hannibal RisingThis book
7.07.0 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 6.4 across 120 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 45% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Horror average of 7.5. That is how 7.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 5.8 | 18 | 15% |
| Hardcover | 6.5 | 102 | 85% |
Frequently asked
How long is Hannibal Rising?
It has 344 pages — shorter than 87% of the ranked books in Horror.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Horror — with scores between 7.0 and 8.1, closest to this book.
