I have first heard about „Software Testing as a Martial Art” by David Greenlees on Joe Colantonio „TestTalk.”
It sounded exactly up my alley since I am also fond of martial art.

Hell, I am even developing my comparison of testing to on Aikido, so I had to read it.

How was it?

I liked this book, Author has a very smooth way of writing, and his point of view is very similar to mine. Meritocracy this book is good, it was hard for me to find statements that I disagree. Allegories to martial arts were also spot on.

The book is about 260 page long and is split into two parts.
Part One Author Store
First Part it consists of about 3/4 of the book. It contains his thought on testing, based on his experience. What problem he seen and to what ideas it lead him.
I’ve enjoyed this part the most. It reminded me what I love the most in manual testing.

There is one problem: Author is referencing James Bach a little too much. – Don’t take me wrong I like James Bach! I’ve built the foundation of my testing on what I have learned from his books /presentations/posts.
But the amount of reference was little jarring. At one moment it made me Feel like the writer didn’t have his own opinions and was only repeating after Bach.

I am legion for we are many

The second part is Relations of other testers and their martial arts,
This section is much weaker and uneven. To the point that it was boring. I have read the first part in one sitting this part was much harder for me I had to make few attempts to finish it.
Overall I liked this book; I wish that I was able to learn more from it. I am putting the blame on the fact that I knew all the books that he used as source material, and as I wrote in the introduction, our views were already similar.

There is one more caviar, and for me, it was the main reason why I did wait the year with reading this book. It is only available in pdf, if you want to read it on Kindle or other EPD, you will have a problem.

So for who is that book?

For people that are starting their adventure in testing and want to expand horizons.

Do I recommend this Book?

Yes, it is a nice read. Plus you can get it quite cheap at leanpub