101 Ray-Tracing, Ray-Marching and Path-Tracing Projects (Paperback)

Outstanding. I kept finding reasons to come back to it.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.

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

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. A couple of chapters felt like they could have been merged, but that is a minor complaint. There is a section near the end that ties several earlier ideas together in a way I had not seen before. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.

I got a lot out of this, even if a few sections felt rushed.

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. The explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.