★★★★★ 3
A Broad Overview, But Light on Modern Fine-Tuning
Format: Paperback
I'm currently really interested in fine-tuning LLMs and recently completed my first LoRA-based fine-tuning on a quantized model. I came to this book looking for more detail on fine-tuning. While it touches on the topic, I found the content didn’t quite align with the current state of the field in 2025. Techniques like LoRA, QLoRA, and PEFT weren’t really covered, and the material leaned more toward what I think are older or lower level approaches. That made it harder to connect with what I’m actually working on.
That said, when I shifted to other chapters — like the sections on prompt engineering techniques such as Chain of Thought (CoT) and Tree of Thought (ToT) — I found more value. These sections were clearer, and I picked up a few practical insights, like using few-shot examples that walk through the CoT reasoning process. That’s not something I’ve tried before, and I can see how it might help smaller models that struggle with any type of reasoning tasks.
Overall, the book feels more like a broad overview of all LLM concepts. For someone exploring many topics across the LLM ecosystem, it offers a wide-ranging introduction. But for readers like me who are actively trying to learn and apply techniques like fine-tuning and quantization, it may leave you wanting up-to-date guidance.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2025
