This book is clearly written and I feel it does a good job of covering the major new features of SQL Server 2005 well enough so you can get up to speed quickly and save enough time versus puzzling things out using just the online materials that come with SQL Server 2005 to easily justify the purchase price and reading time. A number of people with expertise in various aspects of SQL Server collaborated on this book, and the value of the information in each area reflects the depth of expertise.
The book is thick, but it's not bloat -- there is just a heck of a lot of stuff to cover in SQL Server 2005. If anything, I'd be happy to buy the book again if another edition comes out with 300 more pages full of more details and more complex examples in several areas. In the mean time, there is plenty to get one going and fill out specific details with the online doco and the 'net.
I think this book is too advanced for programmers who aren't already up to speed with .NET and relational database server programming. For those of us for which MS SQL 2005 is mostly just another iteration of good ol' Squirrel Server (albeit a big whopping upgrade architecturally and feature-wise), and who've already moved to C# + VS 2005 + .NET 2.0, this is the best book I've found so far.
I addition to covering the new features of SQL Server 2005, this book also provides deeper coverage of several advanced relational database techniques than just the enhancements specific to the 2005 edition of SQL Server. OLAP and XML operations being prime examples. I think the authors made a good choice by providing more than just an overview of the 2005 enhancements as without the broader coverage, presentation of the enhancements themselves wouldn't have made much sense to me.
I also think the book is pretty well organized so you don't have to waste time hunting down what you need. I do warn you however, that you may have to read some parts of the book first before plunging into the specific topic you need first. It's not a fault: SQL Server 2005 includes the CLR, and much of the rest of the book sensibly uses C# on the SQL Server CLR examples, so you kinda have to get up to speed programming in the SQL server CLR first, don't you?