WROX books used to be the only ones I'd buy; after having a grand ol' time with the ASP and ASP Databases series. The Professional series has been a real disappointment (and waste of money!). The books tend to be more wordy than necessary and spend too much time on the obvious and too little on the abstract. Cold Fusion is a fairly straight-forward programming language. WROX has somehow managed to make it much more. Perhaps too many cooks in the kitchen; looks like they had 18 authors put this beast together.
Look elsewhere...

Being a ColdFusion user group president, I give this book my seal of approval. This book is well written with easy to understand examples. It will help someone with no CF knowledge all the way to the experts. This book is well laid out and is enjoyable to read. I didn't know what to expect from Wrox on this. I have been a huge Ben Forta fan but this book is just as good as his (if not better)! If you want to learn CF, or just want to get better, buy this book. You will be very happy with it.

This is a very good book!
Vale a pena galera!

Ever since I read a brief review of this book several years ago I had wanted to read it and I was not disappointed. The writing style is convoluted but also magical and ultimately rewarding. For the adventurous and imaginative only.

An incredible assemblage of characters. A multitude of hints and hidden meanings. It seems to me that the author wants to show off his extensive knowledge of the arts and literature. In that way the book is a quiz about the reader's education, giving him an "aha" moment every time he recognizes one of the characters. And that is just about it - there is no story line to the book. The author is just playing around.

It is beyond me why so many people thinks this book is so inventive and entertaining. To me it is nothing but a literary trick, and the trick is on the reader. The style is precious. The story (or what loose fragments there are) is hard to follow, and the subject is not sufficiently interesting to make it worth the considerable effort Rios demands from the reader.

If you are interested in contemporary Spanish fiction, forget Rios and read Javier Marias who, before long, will surely win -- and deserve -- the Nobel Prize. Julian Rios is a pretender. Javier Marias is the real thing.

Mr. Rios' tour de force performance reminded me of the defunct TV show "The Copy Cats" (subtitled "The Impressionist"). Although I must admit, there were a few heroines/authors I drew blanks on, this did not keep me from enjoying Rios' delightful play on words! If his aim was to dazzle his reader with the broadness of his literary knowledge and wit, he has succeeded superbly ... at least with this reader. I kept wishing my Spanish was good enough so I could read this in the original version, perhaps read both versions in tandem for a double shot of delight!