Rating: 
Summary: more like ten stars...
Review: This is the best ever - I love this author's work but this is definitely his highest accomplishment. In this novel you can see his influence on Dickens. Stavrogin is a villain to end all villains. Yes, this is about revolution, but it is also about unrequited love (and how people will go to the ends of the earth making fools of themselves over it). Some of his other books are kind of downers, but this one is delicious exciting, like a Boschian rollercoaster ride. Go for it - you won't be disappointed!
Rating: 
Summary: shadows in the firelight
Review: This is the first Dostoyevsky novel I ever read. He has become one of my favorite writers. Few authors can so humanize the inhumane. The godless radicals of this novel (Shatov, Stavrogin, and Verkhovensky) are soul mates to some of the most evil figures of the twentieth century (Hitler, Franco, and Stalin.) They dance like shadows in a demonic firelight in the pages of this book. The Devils plunges the reader into the shallow soullessness at the heart of nihilism. It is very much worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Dostoevsky's summit
Review: This is the most "dostoevskian" of all Dostoevsky's novels. Seething with grotesque and violent carnival scenes, with metaphysics on rampage ( a Russian specialty and oxymoron ), "The Devils" remains a unique species. Superficially a satyrical and political novel, it evolves and unfolds into incredible cross-breed of parable and pneumatological/visionary drama. The principal characters (Stavrogin, Verkhovensky, Kirilov, Shatov, Darya,..) have by far transgressed limits of "normal" human experience and are acting their obsessions in a hallucinatory quasireality which remains more "real" than any constructed by standard realistic procedures. Hailed as the first serious political novel, even prophecy of the Russian revolution- this is a judgement I cannot assent to. Communist revolutions were executed by iron-willed ideologues who didn't have any scruples, let alone spiritual vexations; monomaniacal mystics like Kirilov or hysterics like Verkhovensky jr. have nothing in common with efficient bureaucrats and human machines described in works by Pasternak, Koestler or Solzhenitsyn. All in all, "The Devils" remains a unique bodying forth of nihilist malaise that was to become the dominant 20th century "state of mind". If it is a prophecy, then the subject is upheaval of the whole texture of Western cultural/spiritual/political life, not the wreckage of Czarism.
Rating:
Summary: The Best of the Best
Review: This novel is, quite simply, the best I've ever read, and I've read a lot. You will have to slug your way through the first 70 pages the first time through. After that, it's the Fyodor D. at his best throughout. Dostoyevsky is the only author who can elevate the reader to such heights with a mere account of a discussion over dinner. I love Crime & Punishment and the Brothers K., but this one is my favorite of all.
Rating:
Summary: Hmmm....
Review: Well, when I first started reading this, I groaned, thinking it would be a bore of Dickensian proportions. Ha ha. How wrong I was. True, the entire first third is fairly bland and tedious, but the rest is definitely most gripping, and leaves quite the impression.To quickly summarize, this is a book about how a political radical arrives in a provincial town and causes utter chaos by means of lies, deceit and murder, as well as by taking advantage of the inherent weakness and sheep-like qualities of most of the citizenry. Indeed, Peter Stepanovich Verkhovensky is a demonic fellow if there ever was one. Except he's not the kind of demonic villain that you respect while hating - he's just a ludicrous, talentless buffoon, which makes you hate him unreservedly. The thing is - he wins. At the end of the novel, a whole bunch of people either lie dead or have their lives broken beyond repair, and Mr. V. escapes without ever having to deal with the consequences of his actions. Throughout the book, you keep expecting _someone_ to have the guts to stand up to and foil the punk, but no one does. Even the childlike and innocent Kirillov, the one character that the reader can unreservedly like in the book, falls victim to the villain's scheming. And while I'm at it - there are no redeemable characters in this book. All are either scumbags like the villain or such pathetic, will-less mediocrities that I wanted to slap them about the face quite a few times. Among them, the enigmatic Stavrogin, while being hideously amoral, is still the best of the lot due to his courage and will power - and he fails miserably in the end just like everyone else, making this book a story of almost apocalyptic failure and social collapse. Which, of course, was its intended purpose. Dostoyevsky accomplished everything he set out to do, and the result is one of the most oppressively morose books ever written. Not because it's gloomy - actually, it's filled with crude humor - but because of the catastrophic worthlessness of the characters. A success for the author, and a nice kick in the pants for the reader to ponder for a few days after finishing the book. (Aside: Dostoyevsky, a racist? Please, let's not be ridiculous here. Where, pray tell, does he indulge in this purported anti-Semitism of his _anywhere_ in this novel? Let's not read into things and try to find things that don't exist in them, shall we? Harmless though it is, it's annoying how people would try to mar someone's name with meaningless accusations such as this. A bit touchy, eh?)
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