Having read all three books (see my reviews
here,
here and
here), I can maybe shed some light on this. Note that what follows reflects my own personal opinion
Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ by Ivan Kiselev was the very first book on AOP/AspectJ. As I have been working with AspectJ since its inception, I was very eager to read the first book on the subject. At first, it struck me that someone whom I had never seen in the AspectJ community would write THE first book. THE first book is always important in order to draw people's attention. Unfortunately, the book did neither give a really good introduction to AOP nor explain the underlying
philosophy. The author just applied AOP concepts on a web application. Moreover, the book was full of typos.
Then, I saw that Nicholas Lesiecki and Joe Gradecki were writing Mastering AspectJ. Knowing the work of those two guys made me feel a little more confident about the quality of the outcome. In fact, that book was on another level. Great introduction to AOP and the philosophy behind, much more consistent, less typos, provision of an extensive resources list on AOP, etc.
Finally, I got to read Ramnivas' AspectJ in Action. I had already seen some excepts on
www.theserverside.com, and I was eager to get a copy of that book. I must admit that the introduction really makes a great job of showing the reader what the whole AOP thing is all about. The book takes a hands-on approach and is targeted at practitioners who would like to either get to know AOP and AspectJ or deepen their knowledge about the subject. I have yet to send my feedback to Ramnivas as I have some comments about certain parts of the book.
This is briefly my opinion on the three existing books on AspectJ. In order of preference, I would first buy either Aspect in Action or Mastering AspectJ or both
I hope this helps
