Beginner's Guide to Game Animation Programming

Solid and well-organised. A couple of chapters dragged a little.

I bought this on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a forum thread, and I am glad I did. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. Some of the diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. Good value for the price and worth the time it takes to work through properly.

Almost excellent. A second edition could easily push it to five stars.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The chapters on game development are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.

Worth every page. I have already recommended it to two colleagues.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. The explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. If you have the prerequisites, this is an easy recommendation. I will be keeping it on my desk rather than the shelf.