I picked this book up even though I had used Fireworks in the past and was (I thought) pretty good with the program. I'd read some of the author's tutorials and figured it was worth a shot and I might learn something new.
I'm really glad I did. Even though the book is a "start at the very beginning" kind of book, I learned lots of new techniques and short-cuts that I wasn't aware of. The author writes in a very easy to understand style, and never whips out new jargon without explaining what it means first.
Even though the title says this is a beginner;s book I think you can learn a bunch from it even if you've used the program before.

The book is organized as a series of projects.
Some of the projects aren't explained completely. Some rely on you to figure out a step. This is extremely annoying for a "beginner's " book, since it really adds to the time it takes to complete the projects.
It doesn't work well as a reference either, since you have these relatively large projects rather than specific steps so it's not always easy to extract that single step you are looking for.
Finally there are easier ways to do some of the things presented here.

This book is excellent for learning Fireworks. The chapters are walk-through lessons that take you step-by-step through each skill. The exercises have enough repetition to enable you to become fairly competent. The book is much more readable than most other technical books. I have a 4 year in Computer Info Systems, but this book was not "beneath" me. The only complaint that I have is that a few as the exercises didn't work exactly as instructed. With my background, I was able to figure out how things actually worked, so it wasn't a significant problem. Others, with less computer experience, may get a bit more frustrated.

I liked the book so well, I have bought this publisher's books for JavaScript and Flash. I'm hoping they will be as easy to go through and I'll be developing training systems on the web in no time!

As a non-artist web programmer, I was looking for a Fireworks teaching tool that didn't assume I was a graphics expert ...

The Osborn series of "Beginner's Guides" seems to nicely fit a niche between "Dummies" books and "Complete Reference" type books, and this one is no exception.

I learned a lot about Fireworks MX without either wading through fluff or suffering torture-by-encyclopedia. Use this book to learn the basic techniques, then add a more advanced book such as "Using Fireworks MX" for when you need more in-depth information.

these books were pretty inexpensive, however I believe that the training provided by the actual softwares do a better job than this. The only reason i bought these books were because i had a good experience by a dreamweaver training book and figured all training books would be similiar which they are not.
the dreamweaver book i recommend is called DREAMWEAVER 4 H-O-T (Hands on Training) by Caro Green developed by Lynda Weinman
These books dont come with CD tutorials which are sometimes helpful. The pictures are not very good either.