50 Books Challenge 2013 - # 35: Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris (Hannibal Lecter # 4)

Title: Hannibal Rising(Hannibal Lecter # 4)
Author: Thomas Harris
Story: Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck. He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him. Hannibal’s uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with his uncle and his uncle’s beautiful and exotic wife, Lady Murasaki. Lady Murasaki helps Hannibal to heal. With her help he flourishes, becoming the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France. But Hannibal’s demons visit him and torment him. When he is old enough, he visits them in turn. He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in that epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death’s prodigy
Start: september 28th 2013
End: september 30th 2013
Comment: This books completes the circle, the final book in the Hannibal Lecter series. And it's nothing like the other three. The book opens during Hitler's 'Blitzkrieg' operation during World War II, when Axis troops spread across Europe and placed the majority of it under Nazi control. The Lecter family, which consists of the cultured Count and Countess as well as their talented son Hannibal and his little sister, Mischa, flees to their cabin in the woods of Poland to escape from the invading SS. The rest of the book deals with Hannibal as a disturbed teenager trying to deal with the pain over the loss with his sister when he is taken in by his uncle Robert and his dazzling wife, Lady Muraski, and subsequently his life as a young medical student in Paris, where he finally begins planning his revenge on the fiends who murdered his sister. The character of Hannibal still retains his wit and remains fascinating, but is a little more reckless and humane than his older self, though he's still just as delightfully brilliant as ever. You get to know Hannibal Lecter more, but some questions about him will remain unanswered. Maybe that makes Lecter more mysterious, but I really wanted to get the answers. Especially because it's the last book. But at the end you are left with a greater sense of who Hannibal Lecter is.
Rating: 3,5/ 5