Real-Time Ray-Tracing with Vulkan for the Impatient

Three stars feels about right. Useful, but not essential.

I bought this on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a forum thread, and I am glad I did. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. The author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.

Finally, a book that treats graphics with the care it deserves.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. The author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. If you have the prerequisites, this is an easy recommendation. I will be keeping it on my desk rather than the shelf.

A few useful pages, but mostly material I had seen better elsewhere.

This is the third book I have read on graphics this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. Not one I will be returning to. There are better introductions to graphics available.