101 Fractal Projects (Paperback)

Genuinely excellent — I finished it in a week and immediately started again.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. An easy five stars from me. I look forward to whatever the author writes next.

Not for me. The pacing did not work and I struggled to finish it.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. Two stars. The subject deserves a better treatment than this.

A worthwhile addition to my shelf, with realistic expectations.

I bought this on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a forum thread, and I am glad I did. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. The author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.