Alright, here goes.  I have the Hooker lace-ups, and I wrote this the first
day I had them.  Things in [ ] have been added since.

Right out of the box, I liked the feel of this shoe.  I have fairly long,
low feet and it's really hard to find a shoe that gives me the fit I like
without being baggy in the heel and arch sections, but these shoes fit
perfectly.  By perfectly I mean, of course, that the pain isn't concentrated
in any one place ;)  I have two beefs with the fit - One, the slingshot heel
is very strong and the stitching is exposed, so they wreak havoc on the back
of my ankles.  When I take the shoes off, the backs of my ankles are
'dead-skin' white, completely numb, and have stitching imprints in them that
stay for hours.  I haven't worn the shoes for a day and my skin is still red
and slightly numb.  I'm going to put hockey tape or something over the seam
before I put the shoes on again. [now that they're more broken in, this
doesn't happen anymore.]  Two, the place where the tongue is attached to the
upper is somewhat rough.  It's taken a layer of skin off of my fourth toe,
so I'm taping that toe until the leather softens up.

These shoes don't seem to have much sensitivity.  When I'm standing on a
large edge (like the side of an audio cassette case, for example) and it's
angled, I can't tell if I'm standing square on it or if I'm just barely on a
corner until my foot blows off.  I took a nice fall while leading because of
that.  Well, not entirely because of that... my lack of strength might have
contributed a little ;)  It just seems like the soles are too hard in
general.  [Not anymore - they've softened up nicely and are about as
sensitive as I'm used to.  Hopefully they won't get much softer]  They have
very good grip, but I don't see how the dual-textured sole really makes
smearing any easier.  Edging performance is quite good.  I really like the
rubber-covered forefoot - I got hooked on the all-rubber shoes with my old
Rock Socks.  Heel- and toe-hooking are very stable.

All in all, I find these to be very good shoes for sport and gym climbing.
It was a toss-up between these and the Sharks (the slipper version) and I
chose these because of the adjustability of lacing.  Nothing sticks out as
amazingly spectacular (yet) about these shoes, but they do everything that I
need them to very well, plus they're a good deal.  [I've found one thing -
these things have amazing grip.  Holds at the gym that I'd avoid at all
costs before - slopey, polished shiny, smooth - don't even cause me worry
anymore.]  All that stands to be seen is if they keep up their performance.

--
~Mike