Debugging The Uncanny Valley

It does the job, though it took some patience to get through.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The chapters on uncanny valley 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.

A useful guide. The examples assume a particular environment, but that is fixable.

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 avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. Worth picking up if you already have the basics. Set realistic expectations and you will get a lot out of it.

I have read a lot of books on this subject and this is the clearest.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. There is a section near the end that ties several earlier ideas together in a way I had not seen before. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with uncanny valley.