The depth of knowledge required in order to fully appreciate the subject is indeed deep. One must possess a solid foundation in basic algebra at the level of Rotman or Hungerford. That is, you must have spent some serious time in the trenches sweating through a vast array of quality problems. Furthermore, it would be beneficial if the reader had a passing acquaintance with algebraic topology; say the later chapters of Munkres' text. Having this background will make your journey through this text more palatable and much smoother. In general, this is a very nice concise text and the author does an admirable job highlighting the core topics. In my opinion, the area in which this text is lacking is in the exercises-they are either trivial or they do not work towards extending the material-after all the sole purpose of including exercises is to test the reader's ability to "do" mathematics. Of course one could argue that because this is an "elementary" text, and hence necessarily "elementary" readers, that such problems are appropriate. But this brings me to my point, namely, Homological Algebra is not an elementary subject that should be introduced to pre-graduate level students and, to some extent, first or second year graduate students. Why? Simple, the normal run-of-the-mill student will not see the big picture.
With that said, I do recommend this text and I did enjoy reading this text. Again, for someone who has had some quality exposure to algebra I firmly believe you can make your way through the entire book and, by the end, begin to "see" the big picture of where and how Homological Algebra fits in.
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