Rating: 

My experience has been negatively impacted by two factors:

1) the mock exams repeatedly ask questions about content not covered in the book. This is extremely frustrating. If the authors want you to read a section of spec XYZ in addition to the book, they should tell you to do so (or better yet, cover the material themselves so you don't have to read that whole spec to get the pieces they skipped over).

2) Not enough hands on exercises. I'm taking tons of notes as I read the book, but I think my retension would be a lot higher over the long term if I did more hands on application. I'm going to go build some stuff on my own to apply the concepts from the book, but I expected a lot more sample problems as a part of the book than I'm getting.