A Priority Package (The Fowler Series Book 2)

Other readers enjoy the history ww2 Britain and humor. I enjoy history too, but it if it isn't delivered in a compelling style it doesn't make the book worthwhile. I need a really good s I hate to cheat, but I may just cut to the end. I need a really good story myself. View all 5 comments.

Well, this Crime Fiction was better than I thought it'd be, I'd give it 5 stars if it wasn't too long and too detailed. But it's to be expected since it's a historical fiction also. The novel is the first in the series that revolves around the adventures of Arthur Bryant and John May in the peculiar crime squad unit. It focus on the first case they worked on together during the world war 2. It's about a series of murders that occurs in the Palace theater, a murderer who moves swiftly and mange t Well, this Crime Fiction was better than I thought it'd be, I'd give it 5 stars if it wasn't too long and too detailed.

It's about a series of murders that occurs in the Palace theater, a murderer who moves swiftly and mange to get way easily like a phantom Phantom of the Opera XD. They manged to solve the case and the murderer was assumed to be killed during the pursuit. However, 60 years later, when a bomb obliterates the peculiar crime unit building and Arthur Bryant was the only one in the building. John May suspects something is wrong, further digging reveals that Arthur was re-investigating their first case, and the killer might be still alive after all.

It's up to John to find the truth and avenge his old friend and partner. The story keeps swapping between the past and present which what I like most about.

Follow the Author

Arthur Bryant is an interesting character, and "as John May described him" a fun person to be around. View all 4 comments. Feet on the ground… or not? It really was a hell of a blast. The explosion occurred at daybreak on the second Tuesday morning of September, its shock waves rippling through the beer-stained streets of Mornington Crescent. It detonated car alarms, hurled house bricks across the street, blew a chimney stack forty feet into the sky, ruptured the eardrums of several tramps, denuded over two dozen pigeons, catapulted a surprised ginger tom through the window of a kebab shop and fired several roofing tiles into the forehead of the Pope, who was featured on a poster for condoms opposite the tube station.

It's certainly a brilliant opening. A bomb in modern London kills Arthur Bryant, the octogenarian senior partner in the detective team of Bryant and May yes, like the English matches , bringing to an end their six-decade association in the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Unusually for the first book in a long series, author Christopher Fowler sets out to solve the first crime—and the last. The Goodreads friend who recommended this series praised Fowler for his uncanny knowledge of London then and now, and his ability to take the reader into strange corners and situations.

And my friend is absolutely right; Fowler knows the city, and has his feet on its ground; he is at his best when he keeps them there. His descriptions of wartime London ring totally true, and I found myself trusting him, especially in the earlier period. I also had hopes for the setting. A light opera, certainly, but still opera, and thus in my professional world as an opera director; I should have been in my element. Fowler is excellent at describing the physical building, and he has fun with many of the personalities, such as the domineering director: Helena Parole had a handshake like a pair of mole grips and a smile so false she could have stood for Parliament.

Her vocal cords had been gymnastically regraded to dramatize her speech, so that her every remark emerged as a declaration. May felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle with resentment. However, I came to realize that my professional knowledge made me less, not more, suited as a reader. There was too much that was not quite right. Like so many detective writers, Fowler seems engaged in building up a cast of colorful characters, and treats the inbred nature of the theater world as license to take this even farther, creating types rather than working professionals, regular human beings.

And when the story began to hint at elements of the supernatural, in the manner of Phantom of the Opera, or international conspiracies in the manner of Dan Brown, I felt Fowler was losing his best quality, the ability to keep his feet on solid ground. A little over halfway through, I suddenly asked myself, "Do I care to know who has committed these murders, or what happens to all these people?

There was too much that was vague about this story for me to rate it any higher. The chapters shift between the present the book was published in when Arthur Bryant and John May are both in their eighties and when they're working their first case together as members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. The problem is that, when it comes to the relationships and the investigation of multiple murders, there is too much telling and not enough showing. For the investigation things are suddenly a There was too much that was vague about this story for me to rate it any higher.

It's not like we're shown them having deep, personal conversations or surviving a tragedy together. They felt more like the cliff notes to friendship. The cover was nice as was Bryant's sense of humor but, unfortunately, neither really translates into further reading of this series. Fowler brings to life s London during the Blitz offset by the Millennium Eye; the chaos of the streets during the Blitz and the insularity of a theatre; traditional police procedure versus use of a medium; a difficult, quirky detective offset by a personable classic investigator.

I felt the plot was overly complex and the story slow at times, but I was held in the story by the strong writing, humor, and the relationship between the two protagonists. I look forward to reading the next book in this series. This book was recced to me for humor, which turns out not to be quite the case -- more irony and dark wit. Too dark for my current reading needs, which took it down a star subjectively, but well written, which added a star objectively.

Quirky and eccentric without being cozy. Written in omniscient, with parallel tales taking place in two times -- Detectives Bryant and May's first case, occurring during the London Blitz, and their last, in the early 21st Century. The omniscient voice allo Well, hm. The omniscient voice allows some interesting effects as the tale not only alternates eras q. Which a writer can do in omniscient, but not in tight third.

While I find omniscient more emotionally distancing than tight third, no question one can get good breadth out of it, properly handled. Someone is knocking off cast members of a lurid production of the operetta Orpheus while German bombs fall on London, and the newbie detectives must pursue justice for the few inside the labyrinthine building while thousands are dying outside; this part is a pretty good historical novel, among other things. For whatever reason, I seem to be running across a slew of recent British works that appear to want to recapture an older generation, or something from it that is now missed -- not only this, but the TV series New Tricks , and the character of Detective Inspector Nightingale from Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series.

Is this a Thing in Britain at the moment? Or just an artifact of my own selections? The tale starts dark and gets darker, but lightens up toward the end, rewarding the persistent reader. The grimdark almost lost me about a third through, but I peeked at the end for reassurance that I was not to be perpetually punished for my reading efforts, and slogged on. Destroyed the puzzle aspect of the tale, a disservice I suppose, but I don't read mysteries for the puzzles, but rather, for the characters and sometimes settings, which here held my interest fairly well.

I might follow up sometime just to see what the writer does with this setup. View all 3 comments. Ah I have finally finished it - I will have to hold my hand up and apologise this book took far too long to read and that should in no way reflect on the quality of the story or abilities of Christopher Fowler - nope this one sits with me. A mixture of bad timing I was reading it as I was preparing to head to the US on business and the fact I am shallow and was easily distracted by other books to read at the same time.

But what of the book! Well this if I remember correctly go on correct me w Ah I have finally finished it - I will have to hold my hand up and apologise this book took far too long to read and that should in no way reflect on the quality of the story or abilities of Christopher Fowler - nope this one sits with me. Well this if I remember correctly go on correct me was the start of the official series of Bryant and May of the Peculiar Crime squad.

Now this is not to say the first time we have seen them in print or in fact I have read them in print they have appeared in earlier works but they never quite satisfied Mr Fowler. So to correct this he decided to start again - re-writing and tidying up their history and in the case of the book The Darkest Day totally rewriting the book itself.

• Do You Want Sex With That?.
• Full Dark House.
• .
• Get A Copy.
• Roma, il papa, il re (La cultura) (Italian Edition).
• Sword of Death;

So here we have their first case - and without giving away spoilers it does an excellent job of telling us of their first case together and what appears to be their last. It introduces us to London during the blitz and to London in general. Now I have said many times that I do love an authentic London based story and Christopher Fowler cannot get more authentic its not about snobbery I just hate seeing locations I have visited and wander around poorly represented.

It also prepares us for the relationship that comes from working together for so long together, the banter the thought processes and the camaraderie that has developed because of it. The series is as far as I can see still going strong with new titles being added to it all the time. And for me there is still the hint of the fantastical the White Witch of London? Christopher Fowler has the ability of turning his hand to many genres and I have still to find one he has failed at.

I look forward to reading the next in the series although I will make sure its a little more stable in my reading times. I can't wait for 2 - once I find out what it is. It was kind of confusing though - always jumping backwards and forwards through time. One place we are in the '40s and then the next thing you know, we are back in the present day. Admittedly both cases did tie together but it took me a little bit grasping that we were no longer in the same time zone.

Sorry time traveler lovers - this is not "time travel" but just two stories in two different decades taking place within the Excellent. Sorry time traveler lovers - this is not "time travel" but just two stories in two different decades taking place within the confines of one book. First in the Bryant and May Peculiar Crimes Unit historical mystery series and revolving around a pair of detectives who, thankfully, balance each other, and which flips between and in London.

In between, there are some flamboyant theatrical deaths…shades of Phantom of the Opera First in the Bryant and May Peculiar Crimes Unit historical mystery series and revolving around a pair of detectives who, thankfully, balance each other, and which flips between and in London. In between, there are some flamboyant theatrical deaths…shades of Phantom of the Opera! Makes me want to the original tale and the opera myself. Fowler helps create a more fearful atmosphere with the terrible situation for the theatrical people: To call Bryant eccentric is to lowball the guy.

Hmm, Fowler never does explain that flute note. The Story A bomb rips through present-day London, tragically ending the crime-fighting partnership of Arthur Bryant and John May begun more than a half-century ago during another infamous bombing: It was an investigation that began with the grisly murder of a pretty young dancer.

The Characters Bryant and May can be found in both times. September London Detective Arthur Bryant died in a bomb blast that took out the office. Just as he and May were about to retire. His partner, Detective John May , is the level-headed one. Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright has just retired.

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Liberty DuCaine is part of the forensic unit. Oswald Finch is the now-retired forensic pathologist. Raymond Land is the new unforgiving head of the Unit. Leigh is at the Wetherby, a clinic for patients suffering from senile dementia. Stanhope Beaufort has a practical, ahem, perspective on architecture. I loved his explanation of architecture versus his own comfort. Maggie Armitrage is a spiritualist and one of a very few left in the Coven of St. Sidney Biddle is the officious, by-the-book spy planted on Bryant by their boss, Superintendent Farley Davenport , who is completely against the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

Arthur Bryant he has a dicky heart and firmly believes in outside-the-box thinking, an iconoclast, with a true belief in the paranormal. Not a problem that May has. Runcorn is their ancient forensics pathologist; Dr. Finch is the new guy. Police Constables Crowhurst and Atherton are the rest of the staff. The Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus … …is one of the great theatres and makes a rabbit warren seem organized. Elspeth Wynter is the front-of-house manager. Todd is her son. Cruickshank is the archivist.

Nijinsky is the house tortoise. Stan Lowe is the stage doorkeeper; Mouse is his assistant. Geoffrey Whittaker is the stage manager. Anton Varisich is the conductor. Olivia Thwaite is the costume designer. Mack is the head carpenter. Raymond Carrington is the lighting chief. Corinne Betts is the comedienne playing Mercury.

The Second Edition of "Refactoring"

Miles Stone is the star playing Orpheus. The high-strung Valerie Marchmont plays Public Opinion. David Cumberland plays John Styx. Sirius was his father; Diana his mother; and, Minos was his five-years-older brother who was passed over to inherit the business. Euterpe is the Muse of lyric poetry. The more, ahem, spiritual side includes… … Edna Wagstaff is a medium who uses stuffed cats but only Rothschild is left.

Her spirit guide was Squadron Leader Smethwick. Bryant has friends in the Camden Town Coven , the Southwark Supernaturals , the Prometheus League , the Mystic Savoyards , the Insomnia Squad , and a large assortment of paranormalists, idiot savants, primitives, mind-readers, and madmen.

Seamus is the milkman. The Band of Hope is a temperance group. Gilbert Riley is a snoopy critic. The Cover and Title The cover is quite peculiar with its pale yellow background rough edged in a scribble of a darker orangey yellow. Circling around it are icons representing events in the story from guns to grenades, a British flag waving as bombs drop, a tragedy mask for the theatrical shenanigans, and one swirling plant…that Bryant…!

The title encapsulates the murders at the theatre, as it results in a Full Dark House. We're the police, we don't thump people. It's an interesting choice for Fowler to begin his book about a partnership of detectives at the tail ends of their lives and possibly their said partnership. All of the bits set in the present day never really clicked for me, suffering in comparison to Bryant and May's investigation of a series of murders in a theater before and during the staging of a play against the backdrop of the h "'I hope violence won't be necessary.

All of the bits set in the present day never really clicked for me, suffering in comparison to Bryant and May's investigation of a series of murders in a theater before and during the staging of a play against the backdrop of the horrors of the Blitz. Also, the killer reveal is flat out ridiculous. You're either going to love or loathe this book about a British detective in his 80s who finds himself revisiting the first case he worked on 60 years ago with his partner in the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

Be warned that this is not a fast-paced book and it is, unsurprisingly, filled with flashbacks. Flashbacks usually drive me crazy, but I was ok with them in this book. Aug 13, Chuck rated it it was amazing Shelves: While the PCU specializes in using unusual methods to solve their anything but routine cases, to simply call Bryant and May off-beat would be unfair.

Fowler uses clever plots, dark humor, and a memorable supporting cast to tell his stories. The fact that Bthe main characters have been at their jobs since the early s, putting both comfortably in th Christopher Fowler introduces you to Arthur Bryant and John May, lead detectives of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit in this first of a great series! The fact that Bthe main characters have been at their jobs since the early s, putting both comfortably in their 80s, only adds to the charm. The author is clearly very fond of London and the City is as much a character as the detectives themselves.

My wife and I recently traveled to the UK and we were able to visit many of the settings used in the series, including a memorable sunset at Waterloo Bridge. If you go, you'll get an understanding why it's such a frequent location in the books. What I liked most about this story was the camaraderie and humor between the partners. There were quite a few places that gave me a good laugh. I could totally picture these two playing off each other like a good buddy movie. This is the first in a ser 3. This is the first in a series of Bryant and May stories so I think I'd like to see how their friendship grows amidst their peculiar cases.

Nov 29, James rated it really liked it Shelves: Has just that little bit of cleverness, humour, and originality that goes such a long way in a crime series. Also a genuinely skin crawling moment to cherish. It takes a lot of skill, if not a lot of nerve, for an author to set up a book seemingly about the exploits of a crime detective duo and apparently kill one of them off on the first page. The surviving detective John May is now on t It takes a lot of skill, if not a lot of nerve, for an author to set up a book seemingly about the exploits of a crime detective duo and apparently kill one of them off on the first page.

The surviving detective John May is now on the hunt for a cop killer. Much of the book then goes back to that time to give details of the case: Really, I should have known better. The characters are great although a little rude in places, so they might shock your typical crime fan and the setting, both in the past and the present, wholly immersive. A knowledge of Ancient Greek mythology is quite useful here. The overall feeling at the end of this one is that it is a combination of a traditional British crime thriller with a touch of the Phantom of the Opera about it.

As the deaths continue at the London theatre, the cause seems almost supernatural. Full Dark House is a more subtle tale, cleverer in its plot twists, sexier and more stylish, although less genre related, perhaps. Full Dark House is not a book that tries to repeatedly show the reader explicitly how clever it is: The little touches, as literary Easter Eggs, kept me amused throughout: Bryant and May are the brand name for a British box of matches, for example. This would make a wonderful BBC Television series. I struggled to put this one down. Nine more to go and find. Bring on the next!

May 18, Claude rated it really liked it Shelves: Three and a half stars really. I liked the background a London theatre during the Blitz , I had a bit of trouble making sure who was who, though! Maybe it was me, or maybe it was the fact that the book constantly shifted between the past and the present. But it was certainly an interesting read, often humorous, and although I tended to mix up Bryant and May, I might get used to them better in a second episode.

Nov 13, Rachel England-Brassy rated it really liked it Shelves: It may take a while for the book to work its way through the various distribution channels. In particular it tends to be slow getting to other countries and international availability of electronic formats can get complicated, as it's tied into book distribution agreements in various countries. If you're having difficulty getting a copy, your best bet is to contact informit , as my publisher knows much more than me about the complications of book distribution. There was a great deal I learned and am still learning from Kent, but one thing that really stood out was the approach he took to continually reworking the code base to keep it healthy, an approach that went under the then-unknown name of "Refactoring".

In my other consulting work I stressed how valuable a technique this is, but couldn't point people to a book to learn about it, so I ended up writing it myself. It was published just before the 20th Century ended. That's nearly twenty years ago, and the technique is now more widely known, although often not executed as well as it should be.

The book has also held up pretty well, and I think you can take this old book and still learn how to refactor pretty much as well as you could all those years ago. But the book shows its age, with wrinkles like the use of java. So over the years I've been thinking about revising it, but I have also been reluctant.

After all it still teaches the technique perfectly well, and second editions have a horrible habit of not improving on the original. But a further force has been tugging at me. At the time I wrote it, it was becoming mainstream to consider classes as the dominant structuring the mechanism for code.

These days, however, we see other structures playing a greater role. Classes still are valuable, in my view, but our refactoring needs to be less centered around them, realizing that they can come and go as code is trained into new shapes. During and early I wrote a series of essays exploring various circumstances for refactoring, this helped me get a feel for if I should tackle a rewrite, and if so, how. By mid I was ready to commence the work in anger. If you've been wondering why I haven't been writing as much for martinfowler. The changes are both very minor and all-encompassing.

They are minor because the basic structure of the book hasn't changed. I begin with an opening example, a chapter of principles, a survey of "code smells", and an introduction to testing. The bulk of the book is a catalog of refactorings and of those 68 refactorings, all but 10 are still present, and I've added 17 new ones. Despite this lack of change in the overall book structure, the changes to the words on pages is huge.

Every chapter and refactoring has been rewritten, mostly from near scratch. I rarely had decent opportunities to cut and paste text from the old edition. The reorientation towards a less class-centered view is a large part of this. Although that may sound as simple as changing the name of "Extract Method" to "Extract Function", it did entail rethinking all aspects of every refactoring.

I needed to reconsider the motivation, often feeling that it needed to be reframed.

The mechanics needed at least a detailed review, often a complete rewrite. I wasn't keeping detailed notes on this, but my feel is that for every relatively simple import of an old refactoring, there were two that required a complete rethink. However there is another change, which in a way isn't that important, but is bound to get a lot of attention. The examples are no longer in Java. When I choose a language for examples in my writing, I think primarily of the reader.

I ask "what language will help the most readers understand the concepts in the book? I picked Java because I felt the most people would be able to understand the code examples if they were written in Java. That was the case in , but how about in ? I considered using multiple languages, which would emphasize the language-neutral intent of the book. But I felt that would be more confusing for the reader, better to use a single language so they can get used to a consistent form of expression.

So which one would be the most approachable to readers? Such a language needed to be widely popular, among the top half a dozen in language popularity surveys. It really helps to have a C-based syntax, since most programmers would recognize the basic code structure. Given that, two stood out.

One was Java, still widely used and easy to understand. But I went for the alternative: Choosing JavaScript was deeply ironic for me, as many readers may know, I'm not a fan of it. It has too many awkward edge cases and clunky idioms. ECMAScript ES6 introduced a rather good class model, which makes many object-oriented refactorings much easier to express, but still has annoying holes that are built into the fabric of the language from its earliest days.

But the compelling reason for choosing it over Java is that isn't wholly centered on classes. There are top-level functions, and use of first-class functions is common. This makes it much easier to show refactoring out of the context of classes. The world-wide web has made an enourmous impact on our society, particularly affecting how we gather information. When I wrote the first edition, most of the knowledge about software development was transferred through print. Now I gather most of my information online. This has presented a challenge for authors like myself, is there still a role for books, and what should they look like?

I believe there still is role for books like this, but they need to change. The value of a book is a large body of knowledge, put together in a cohesive fashion. In writing this book I need to gather together lots of refactorings, and organize them in a consistent and integrated manner. But that integrated whole is an abstract literary work that, while traditionally represented by a paper book, need not be in the future. Most of the book industry still sees the paper book as the primary representation, and while we've enthusiastically adopted ebooks, these are just electronic representations of an original work based on the notion of a paper book.

With this book, I'm exploring a different approach. I think of the canonical form of this book as the web site. The paper book is a selection of material from the web site, arranged in a manner that makes sense for print. It doesn't attempt to include all the refactorings in the canonical book, particularly since I may well add more refactorings to the canonical web book in the future. Our intention is that when you buy a copy of Refactoring, 2nd Ed, you might buy it at a bookstore in its physical form, or online in any form.

The most essential thing you get for your money is permanent access to the web site. You can read the physical book, and access the web site whenever you need.

The Second Edition of "Refactoring"

This raises a question of what role ebooks such as epubs and kindle books should play. There is a strong argument that they should contain all the information on the web site, after all physical size isn't a factor, and ebooks can be updated easily if I add new material. However the book industry doesn't think that way, they expect ebooks to have the same content as the physical books, so the ebook versions of refactoring will follow that principle, at least for now. There is somewhat of a shift away from a purely class-based structure but my aim has been not to change the scope of the book too much.

So I followed a rule of not letting the second edition venture into new topic areas. My general plan was take each refactoring in the first edition, and ask what needs to be done to it for it to be relevant in this slightly altered context. In a few happy cases I could take the refactoring pretty much as it was, do a simple rewrite of the example into JavaScript, and be done with it. Usually however it required a significant rethink of the mechanics and the example.

Sometimes it meant the original refactoring was replaced by something similar. But I did explore some essays on using refactoring to help explore various architectural problems in and early I enjoyed writing them, and they indicated a vehicle I could easily use more in the future.

Early in February my editor at Pearson sent out the current state of the book to various people for a technical review.

Editorial Reviews

This is a vital part of the process for writing a book, any author will make mistakes, and I make plenty. Reviewers help catch those, and also highlight things that are not clearly explained. When I started the book I gathered together a panel of people to do on-going review. Their feedback has helped enormously. But at some point I need someone to step back and take a fresh look at the whole book, which is where these recent reviewers have come in. Michael who has reviewed previous books for me feeds me lots of good suggestions for additional material that would take years to follow up on, so I have to let most of those go by.

Michael is particularly good at this, he must have installed several compilers into his wetware, which is one reason why I find him such a good reviewer. William Chargin is challenging him however, so I feel doubly blessed. Clarifications are often the hardest to figure out. People will always have difficulties with bits of a book, trying to fix every individual difficulty would be cure worse than the disease - the book would have to be much bigger, and the prose would get so stilted that it would be tedious to read.

An example of this was the way I laid out nested functions in the opening example confused three of the panel, so I knew I had to try a different approach. I always rather enjoy working through review comments. This stage is particularly good as it forces me to step back too. Now I can look at the material as a whole, yet still dive down to sort out important details. That sounds rather convoluted, but there is a process here. Every candidate book submitted to the series is sent to all the authors in the series, and I ask for their opinion. In that case, they helped me decide to reject myself.

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This time they felt it was an easy inclusion, which reinforced my feeling that it was a good fit. And there is some vacation in there, which I hope will help rejuvenate me a bit. This week was the week I finally got back to my desk in New England after five weeks on the road. I had hoped to have finished the text before I went away, but there were still some review comments that needed work.

I also got a final batch of comments just before I left. So this week I made my first pass through that final batch and now just have the outstanding todos from the reviews. The good news is that I only have fourteen of them. I will hopefully get through them over the next two weeks before I have to hit the road again. Another topic on the book this week was starting to think about the cover. The core cover design is already settled, as it will be part of my signature series, but it does mean I have to pick a photo of a bridge.

As with last week, this week has seen me working on review comments so I can finalize the technical content of the book before starting the production process. I went through all the comments last week, doing all the easy ones that I could deal with in less than an hour or so. That left the complicated ones, which are pretty stressful to be working on at this late stage in the game, with a admittedly, somewhat self-imposed deadline staring at me. At the heart of my work this week is reworking two examples. Both were ones where a couple of reviewers found difficult to follow, so I needed to figure out something that I think will be easier.

I find code examples to be one of the most difficult aspects of my writing. I try to create examples that are just complicated enough to show the main point, but no more complicated that that. The earlier example was particularly tricky as it was a section of a larger refactoring example, the future opening example of the book. This example divides into three phases, and reviewers indicated problems with the middle phase. I reworked the sequence of the refactorings, and hopefully things are much clearer now. The essence of the change was to follow the now-written mechanics of this new refactoring, and I was happy to see that following these mechanics seemed to make it a good bit easier to do and understand.

My aim is that they should work pretty well, most of the time. So I was pleased that following them helped me through this example. Reworking refactoring examples like this make me very familiar with git. But doing this is tricky with refactoring, since I have a sequence of changes to the code. I then import the code into the book text with tags that indicate the ref of the commit, and the name of the code fragment.

The target still seems plausible, although much will depend on how the fifty lines I wrote today works as I write about the refactoring steps that go with it. In the days of traditional publishing, this means that the author hands her manuscript over to the production team. At this point we expect no significant changes to the core material of the book. There will be changes: But the sense of crossing an important bridge is still there. At some level, the book is done. Although, since this is a web-first book, I intend to continue to evolve its web representation.

I have a sense of relief, although there is still much to be done with the book, this is still a big milestone, a sign that my focus on the book will begin to wane.