A better next read. A clearer next step.

Excellent from start to finish. No filler, no padding.

I picked this up after getting stuck on a project and it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.

Some sections were excellent and others felt like filler.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The chapters on game development are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.

Mixed feelings. The good parts are genuinely good; the rest is forgettable.

This is the third book I have read on game development this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. A couple of chapters felt like they could have been merged, but that is a minor complaint. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. Fine, but there are stronger books on the same subject if you look around.