Slacker hero and desperate romantic Scott Pilgrim returns in this digest-sized adventure, as usual mixing equal parts sly soap opera and clever postmodernism. This penultimate outing in the hugely popular graphic novel series finds Scott in the thick of a happy relationship with the hard-won Ramona V. Flowers, but troubles arise when past indiscretions come to light, leading to some uncomfortable doubts. At the same time, Scott must face down the latest of Ramona's evil ex-boyfriends, the robot-controlling twins Kyle K. ("handsome jerk") and Ken K. ("perfect asshat"). The idea of baby-faced manga characters spouting occasionally obnoxious hipper-than-thou commentary should not be hard for most teens to swallow, and set amidst the entertaining boyfriend battles, the painful break-up conversations th a high level of insight and a good dose of realism ck an emotional wallop. Ending on a mysterious note, we are left with things well set up for the final installment and the ultimate showdown between Scott and the last of the evil ex-boyfriends.

Gr 10 Up-Scott and Ramona both carry emotional baggage from their previous relationships. Scott cheated on one or more of his ex-girlfriends, who have names like Envy and Knives. Ramona has several ex-boyfriends whom Scott has been fighting over the course of this series. This book is filled with characters in their 20s who look and act much younger. Theyre bored when they go to parties, so they sit around complaining. Theyre in a band but they spend more time arguing with each other than rehearsing or performing. There are several fantasy elements, as when Scott gets into fistfights with robots sent by Ramonas ex-boyfriends. Ramona also seems to be fantastic in an unexplained way, which promises to be explored in volume six. OMalleys cartoon style is eye-catching, but the similarity of the androgynously attractive faces sometimes makes it difficult to tell one character from another. Readers who are not familiar with the earlier volumes may have trouble understanding these characters, their motivations, and the sudden appearance of robots in a (seemingly) reality-based story. But luckily for those readers, summaries of the previous installments as well as many sample pages are available on the scottpilgrim.com Web site. Its hard to empathize with a character who appears to be the designated hero, but who is also a slacker with poor communication skills. The main problem with Scott Pilgrim is that readers might choose to side with the universe instead. Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library