[racket] Realm of Racket as Starting Book?

To the authors:

I have recommended Realm of Racket to a friend who expressed an interest 
in programming in conjunction with HtDP.  Now, I'm sure the creators 
would "strongly encourage" future software engineers to be comfortable 
with the material in HtDP, but exactly how difficult is the "intended 
for novices with basic exposure to programming" Realm of Racket?  I ask 
because I'd rather not give him two books to work through at the same 
time and have him lose interest trying to solve n-queens and implement 
BFS vs making (to him possibly more interesting) games.

I'm geographically close in real life to I can also lend assistance in 
the beginning.  So is it a true starter book?