Reviews - Red Dragon | The StoryGraph

3.54k reviews for:

Red Dragon

Thomas Harris

3.94 AVERAGE

crimsonreaperx's review against another edition

3.5

mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Well it's very different from the movie for sure. Hannibal doesn't play such a dramatic and important role as it's shown in the movie. The book gives Francis more background and humanized him more as an abused and unwanted child with messed up well everything. It also shows more of will graham psyche and fear. The common phrase to catch a monster you have to think like one applies here and having the character acknowledge this and possibly fear the potential of actually having the tools to become one. It is my opinion that this book plays more on the psychology not only of the serial killer but of graham himself and how it affects his personal life and like the red dragon molly is just a tool to escape his past as the coworker is the escape for Francis from the red dragon,Both ending in loss.

It's not a blow you away tittle like the movie but you understand more the substance and the full picture. It's decent to pretty good. Has some stumbles and snags. But it's overall a good book and read.

joey_estrada's review against another edition

4.0

dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I read this because I recently got hyperfixated on Hannibal. There are many obvious differences, but I still enjoyed the story quite a bit.

The characters still felt the same as they do in the show. I liked how we were able to see each characters complex thoughts and feelings at different times in the book.

There is some racism and misogyny but it's a book written in the 80's so it's not surprising.

The writing is very straightforward. No poetic prose or anything. Though, I didn't mind it at all.

The book was paced well and felt like following a real investigation.

I enjoyed the characters and the mystery. Looking forward to the rest of the series :)

Content Warnings

dustilane's review against another edition

3.0

So I've watched the Silence of the Lambs movie, but never read the book. I decided to finally get to reading it then realized this book exists and decided to jump in with Red Dragon first.

I think I got confused with the description though because I assumed in this book we'd be seeing Hannibal when he was out and doing his thing (for lack of a better word), which is not the case.

It's as disturbing and creepy as you would expect. I was sufficiently grossed out and intrigued the entire time. The reason it's a 3 star for me is just because I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would and kind of made me not AS excited to read Silence of the Lambs, though I'm still planning on it.

sz_dorkka's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 65%

I loved the silence of the lambs movie and thought why not read the whole series. So I went into this thinking it was just as good and it became the biggest disappointment of my life. It's still a soft dnf so I do want to finish it.

deansrummer's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

inky2310's review against another edition

4.5

This is the first book by Thomas Harris I have read, I very much enjoyed it, however due to the age of the book some of the sentence structures took me a couple of read overs to understand and it wasn't always clear who was speaking in long patches of dialogue. The pacing was strange but it worked well with the book, Slow for the slower parts and then sped up when the story need it to. Will be going on to read the second book.