Book Review: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour

Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour is out. The 6th and final book of a series that has been published one volume per year since 2004 is out. The story is finished. In the months leading up to this book release all readers have been waiting to find out what would happen. Will the plotlines be resolved or will we be left with Lost levels of dangling plot threads.

Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour focuses on the end of the quest of the protagonist, the titular Scott Pilgrim. Scott is a loser. He’s a loser in a way that you can’t help but like him, though. Not only is he a loser, but also he has to defeat the 7th of his love Ramona Flower’s evil ex’s so that he can date her. (Seriously, these are the rules that she lays out in the first volume and which are accepted by Scott with nary an eye-twitch) He has defeated each of the other 6 in combat over the preceding five volumes and now must face the most recent, and most evil, ex: Gideon Graves. Over the course of this series we have gotten to know Scott and his friends as they go about their somewhat shallow lives in downtown Toronto. We have learned about them, and it would seem, many readers have become emotionally invested in them. The final volume lives up to all the expectations I went into it with. It tied up the story lines, and as always, the art worked perfectly with the story.
The Scott Pilgrim series has been a hit with the Nintendo generation for the past 5 years, and there was a lot of anticipation leading up to the release of the final volume. Brian Lee O’Malley has created a world in the Scott Pilgrim books in which video game reality is what people live in. When Scott defeats an enemy they disappear in a shower of coins.
The Scott Pilgrim series is a series of graphic novels written by Brian Lee O’Malley, a former Torontonian who began this series while working at a comic store in downtown Toronto. The fact that the volumes appear superficially to resemble manga has put off many readers I have spoken to while trying to recommend this book, but I have never heard a bad word said about the series once someone starts it. The characters are all engrossing and throughout the series readers have come to know and love (and sometimes hate) all of them. The sixth volume provides a very satisfying conclusion to the series. All the plotlines are wrapped up and the character arcs are completed in a way that doesn’t leave the audience feeling cheated. The sixth volume is a fitting end. As a whole, the Scott Pilgrim series has something that can appeal to most everyone. It has romance. It has action. It has so many pop culture and video-game references it’s almost overwhelming. It’s extremely well written, as well as showcasing Toronto in a most appealing manner.