Simply a story I could not get through; after trying hard to make it through the first volume, the second volume was even tougher. I believe it has to do with the graphics, which were a little too "Japanime" for my tastes, and a story which seemed hokey as it pulled from legends of Adam/Eve, God/Devil.

At first, when I grabbed this volume and saw the title was "Girl on Girl," I almost hurled it across the room. But I give it four stars for two reasons: the line of good guy/bad guy is blurred, finally an update on Beth, and it was shorter than the other volumes! YES! But seriously, there was actually some development in this step - and I'm most curious as to what's going on with Beth.

This series is beginning to grow on me - one of the strongest volumes. I like the Beth plotlines. Both Beths. Much more than whatever is going on with Yorick.

This has been the best in the series so far, mainly because you can see some of the storylines coming together to a conclusion. Before this book, it was all so abstract and unknowing. I'm looking forward to concluding the series and hopefully getting some closure. And the women are finally not all panicking.

There should always be one character you can root for in a book. I've come to realize there is nobody in this series, least of all Yorick, that I like. This volume dealt with a lot of the pasts and childhoods of the characters - I still didn't care

Another great criticism in the BFI Modern Classics series; I love reading these books and rewatching the movies to see new things.

The Uncommon Reader was a charming, quick read. It made me smile as I read about the Queen discovering reading. It's witty and I enjoyed the simple structure of the novel as it progressed, never slowing and always light and funny.

In the tenth volume, the story finally evolved into something more. Perhaps it's different for me to read it in ten volumes rather than issue per issue, but the series as a whole was disappointing. The tenth volume is great though: it almost makes up for all the boringness of earlier volumes.

However, I'm wary it may suffer from something I too often see on television shows - where a bad, mean, boring or unremarkable character is suddenly rehabilitated so you care about the person when he/she is injured or dies (think of the character Shannon on Lost). This happened to many characters during this volume. The sentimentality felt very last-ditch-effort, but I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed it.

The book was fast-paced and ALL of the storylines were relevant, as opposed to earlier volumes with storylines that were downright boring and didn't contribute to the central story and characters.

Characters finally make brave decisions here - not safe ones, but the right ones. I was interested in these people and their final actions, where I had theorized through the rest of the series about a world without men and the portrayal of women throughout. (I'm still not completely settled on that count.) I especially liked the jumps in time to reveal what becomes of the world, of the characters, and of relationships. It made sense, for the most part, and there are a few surprises.

Though the entire series wasn't my favourite, this final conclusion may have, a little bit, made it worth the chance.

The book really throws you into the story with no exposition; four voices revolve in sections and not until a good deal into the book do you figure out who they are and how they are related to each other. It didn't deter me, though I can see how it might for others. It calls for active reading, and I always enjoy that. There's also a lot of commentary through these characters on Colombia and its tumultuous history...it's definitely a bit hard to try to explain the novel, but I liked it because it was original and the writing was excellent. I enjoyed the narrative - and kept thinking about how hard it must have been to write four very distinct voices in such a manner. Also, references to Latina culture made me smile throughout.

This book is almost like a short story - I flew through it. However, it's short number of words didn't deter from all that happens in the plot, and all the beauty of Turgenev's characters. While part of the plot leads to what I might see happen on a nighttime soap opera, the characters here, in 1800s Russia, react differently and this was probably the most surprising part for me. And at the same time, there are many things a young 16-year-old Russian boy describes about his first love, that even I, a 25-year-old American girl in 2009, can relate to.