I've just bought the book, so obviously I haven't read it, but I have checked out a couple of the chapters, so here's a super preliminary review.
First off, the value of this book for me is that it provides a cohesive overview of Riak, much like an O'Reilley Guide or Pragmatic Programmers book. However, compared to them it is about half the length at 121 pages, so it is more of an introduction than a comprehensive reference. This is fine because basho maintains a great wiki for all the technical details... and from what I read, covering the mainstream of Riak use doesn't require more.
The book is pretty up to date, covering secondary indexes, as well as Riak Search, but alas, one of the subjects I most would like to have seen, Riak Pipe, doesn't seem to be covered (yet?).
It walks you thru how to use Riak, providing example code in a fairly cohesive manner.
Most importantly, it (seems to) provide the connective understanding for how features fit together and can be used in a real, production system. Something its sometimes hard to get (at least for me) from reference material like the wiki.
For instance, one issue that might happen is you might lose a server. Its great that riak continues to operate, and bringing the server back up or a new server up is straightforward, but I know enough to know that there are
I have read the CouchDB book from Orielley, which is more comprehensive, but a bit incoherent at times. Still this book doesn't go into the level of detail as the CouchDB book.
I'd love to see a day where there's 4-5 strong books on Riak and this book would be getting knocked for being too light, but at this stage of the game, this book seems to be a big step forward.
Again, this is preliminary feedback from reading part of the book, when I did enjoy, from someone whose been working with riak to some extent, and been relying on the wiki for information for the most part.
