Rinzler is good.
He seems like a smart and honest guy from the way he talks in interviews and the work that he's done.
And this book is WELL worth the 35 buck I got it for pre-order.
I think it might be 35 bucks worth of good heavy paper.
Its heavy.
Well made.
But he said himself that this was more of a contract for hire job.
It wasn't that same kind of thing he did through his close association with Lucasfilm for the Star Wars books.
In fact, as skeevy neu-disney is wont to do,
they're probably just exploiting his name value rfom the Star Wars books to stick his name on an Alien book,
the same way they just stuck Kasdan's name on the script for a jj abrams star wars ripoff.
The point being that this book is well assembled physically,
good stuff in it becasue he got access to everything,
but it wasn't the LABOR OF SUPER LOVE that an Alien superfan like Val will do.
You can see that he respects the movie,
theres no callousness or disrespect to it,
...like a jj abrams...
but you can see and feel how it was a contract job when your reading it.
Well done, but a contract job.