Got my copy in the mail today, it looks pretty great. I haven't had time to do much more than page through it a bit at this point.
I'm a little miffed that the apparent cover art on Amazon isn't actually cover art. It isn't even a dust jacket. It's kind of hard to describe, it's just a thin strip of paper that wraps around part of the outside of the book and is taped on the inside covers. I'm likely going to remove it and throw it away, it's really not secured to the actual book very well to begin with and it feels kinda cheap. I'd kind of liken it to the semi-disposable outer slip cover you see with some blurays (especially steelbooks) but even less impressive.
Also I'm a little disappointed that the book gives LV-426's size as the (incorrect, IMO) 1200km figure, rather than using the 12,000km figure from the USCM Tech Manual. I can't say I'm that surprised, though.
Receiving this book also motivated me to FINALLY get back to reading Fire and Stone (I got the "complete edition", but the book is just so goddamn huge that it's a bit of a chore to read comfortably). Somehow I never made the connection that Prometheus' LV-223 and Alien's LV-426 were both moons of the same planet. Did Prometheus actually indicate that? Or is that something that was established outside of the movies?
This is a bit of a personal preference thing, but after paging through the book a bit, I kinda wish it was visually more of an "in universe" book in the way the USCM Tech Manual is. Like, don't get me wrong, the artwork is gorgeous and really visually impressive, and the actual text itself (what little I've skimmed) feels like it's mostly written in an in-universe style like the USCM Tech Manual was, but the total package just doesn't quite convey the feeling of "this is an official report that a W-Y employee could pick up off a bookshelf and read".
Like the USCM Tech Manual has this sort of "dryness" where visually the layout is all very mundane and, well, technical, even if the actual content and pictures are really interesting. The Weyland Yutani Report feels a little bit more like a Dorling Kindersley "visual guide" by comparison.
