12 Games of Christmas

Very good, with a few caveats. The core material is strong.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. The progression from chapter to chapter is well thought out; nothing feels out of order. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.

Better than I expected. Rare to find a technical book this well judged.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. There is a section near the end that ties several earlier ideas together in a way I had not seen before. The progression from chapter to chapter is well thought out; nothing feels out of order. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. I have already recommended it to two colleagues and will recommend it to more.

A superb guide. The examples are small but complete.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.