I signed up for the alpha program at Apress for this book in February only to find out that they only had the shell that was worthless. In desperation for linq to be explained I bought the C# version which while ok left a lot of VB stuff to the imagination. After it came out I had to contact them to get the download for the release version as they didn't email it to me and it wasn't on their website.

So first, don't get pulled in to any alpha programs with Apress. They did finally send a link to me and I have been reading it repeatedly over the last week. The book refers to his blog which is a joke but I wasn't buying a blog.

Now to the book. It completely explains linq using vb using examples and that's what I wanted. The syntax for all the different query operators is hard to find and if shows them all. Overloads and all.

It covers all the flavors of linq and not like a red headed step child like the other linq books. So if you write in VB I think this is one of the few books you would really want to have. Organization is great, the examples are not so trivial as to be worthless or so complex as to be confusing. Explanations and suggestions for use are straightforward. My weakest area was linq to xml and that chapter personally helped me out the most.

My one suggestion to all authors is have more examples that all show complex objects that are more than doubles and strings. All you need to do is have two property objects so the syntax is plain on using the examples in more real world coding. This author uses a list of presidents for a lot of the examples. How much better would the examples have been with a name and their birthday as the example objects being queried.

I have been waiting on this book ever since the C# version came out and I was not disappointed. Virtually every aspect of LINQ in VB is covered starting with the language additions in VB 2008 such as Expression trees, Lambda expressions, etc. Linq to objects, Linq to XML, Linq to SQL, and Linq to dataset are all covered. I like the code style as well. It's not a big case study or application but succinct snippets that illustrate the authors point. However, support for this book is poor in my opinion, hence the title of the review. If it exists, I am unable to find a source code download anywhere. APress offers a $10 EBook in the book but I have not been able to access this offer. The web site says it's not offered. Finally, the APress web site had this book listed as an Alpha book days after it was for sale on Amazon.

So the lack of support marred an otherwise good experience. But I could not be happier with the book.