[antovsky]

Yes I believe that's correct. My intuition is that since these matching experiments are very local, it's perfectly possible to have 'constant' distances integrate into non-linear curves (which are no longer 'the shortest path') or simply have error build up as you take 'finite steps'. Indeed I believe that's what caused the "blue turns purple" problem in CIELAB back in the day, since it was fairly constant locally but had non-straight hue lines.

http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?UPLab.html

CAM02 is certainly much more uniform than LAB (hence OS's using it to print these days) but I think the problem is still fundamentally there (especially once we start talking about 'appearance' given a 'surround' and so forth).

The Fairchild book is indeed a classic and a heavy hitter as you mentioned :) I can't claim to have read it cover to cover.

Another interesting (and somewhat unconventional) book is Jan Koenderink's "Color for the Sciences".