This book is excellent. For those who lose interest when reading long reviews, that's the most important bit ;-)
I did have a couple of gripes with the book, but not enough to take it down to four stars...
First, despite proudly advertising that all code is available in VB and C#, the truth is that the book doesn't contain a single line of C#. You have to look on the CD to pull out the C# versions of the code. That's not a huge problem, but it would have been nice if he had alternated languages so you could get used to both.
Second, the book is very long. Yes he covers a lot of ground and explains it well, but many of the code samples just repeat previous samples with one line different. He would have been better just showing the line that had changed and leaving the full sample on the CD.
Having said that, the book is excellent. It actually explains it very well and gives you ideas that are useful in real life. Many of the ASP.NEt stuff I've seen gives you kid's samples that are cute, but leave you wondering how to develop them into something useful. This books helps you take the next step. That's not so say it's all clear, I still had loads of questions!!
Disclaimer: This is only the second ASP.NET book I've read (the other was Special Edition Using ASP.NET by Que which was one of the most badly written books I have ever read), so I can't really conpare with other books. I've seen quite a lot of the on-line resources, and this knocks them all out without a doubt.