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This book describes itself as "an introductory text and a handy reference"; it fails to meet either of these claims. The level of content is inconsistent, interleaving basic concepts with expert descriptions; an approach that would see experienced engineers quickly losing interest, and new comers rapidly becoming overwhelmed. The book does not appear to have a target audience, in some places concepts are well explained, however others are simply skipped over leaving a gap in the readers knowledge that is called upon later in the text. My main criticism of this title is that it assumes the reader is fully conversant with formal notation. In an attempt to cater for readers without this knowledge an introductory tutorial is provided, however it falls drastically short of imparting the level of knowledge required to successfully appreciate the books content.

After hours of perseverance all I gained form this book was a headache! To ensure that this was not down to my interpretation I circulated the title amongst my colleagues all of whom were of the same opinion (quite an interesting conclusion considering we develop real time software for combat aircraft!).

I feel to recommend this title would be irresponsible. I do not feel the explanations given were sufficient to make this title suitable for beginners, whilst the irregular pitching of the content would quickly frustrate readers with an intermediate level of knowledge, and due to this title claiming to be an introductory text I would not expect it to be applicable to experienced readers.