The book is rather formulaic, or rigidly structured, so that it reminds the reader of official IT specification documents. However, all diagram explanations and elaborations come with suitable and lucid examples, which makes it much less dry than a pure specification book. It's ok for a front-to-back-reading, but its strength lies in serving as a reference handbook. A nice gimmick is the poster delivered with the book, showing all the most important elements of all UML diagram types.