TL;DR: It is not everyday that I definitely need to learn from a book. When I got “Game AI pro” I needed to learn as much as possible about practical usage of Behaviour Trees, and it didn’t disappoint.
General Review
These series of books by CRC show a high level of production. It can be intimidating at first, but you should keep going. The book is a compilation of articles from different authors, the quality and depth varies but is generally high.
Having the article on chapter 2 about Neurology was cool to read. It went into more detail than in other AI books and it was refreshing.
I wasn’t interested in Randomness so I am afraid I don’t know how useful those articles are because I skipped them.
All the articles related to Behaviour Trees where relevant and useful to me. There is a few introductory chapters that are well written that explain some options on how to organize your AI.
I found particularly interesting the chapter(?) “Simulating Behaviour Trees: A Behaviour Tree / Planner Hybrid Approach (Daniel Hilburn)”. I had never though about a Monitor and Behaviour Tree combination and it got me thinking. (so many times I would start reading, follow my though path, forget what I read… had to start that section again). For this particular chapter, the sample code was neatly organized. Out of all the authors, perhaps this is the one I would find more useful to have a chat over a beer (and hopefully close to a white board, just in case).
Talking about sample code, Some of the samples are great, others give you something without enough context.
If you are thinking of buying this book you need to be aware that, like most game development books, there is not as much code as you would expect and when there is it is C++ code. If you are looking for practical advice about production AI, then this is the book for you.