<p>Since comet88 seems to enjoy disagreeing with me just for the sake of disagreeing with me (as I should have expected!), I’ll offer an alternative option to linear algebra with Santhanam. I will probably sound crazy but here goes: consider Honors Linear Algebra with Zucker. Yes it is much harder than the regular version and yes Zucker is insane, but he is very helpful during office hours and doles out grades pretty fairly (I had him for Abstract Algebra so he may teach Lin. Alg. differently but I have a friend who really liked Zucker for Lin. Alg.).</p>