Reviewed by Jes Burns

            Like so many nonfiction authors of the past five years, Dava Sobel takes familiar inanimate objects and presents her readers with new avenues of understanding them - historically, scientifically, culturally and politically.  Sobel presents The Planets in ten chapters (not counting the overview and coda), logically lumping Neptune and Uranus into one essay and throwing in the sun and the earth’s moon for good measure.  But instead of progressing from one celestial body to the next, illuminating the secrets of the cosmos seamlessly to form an overarching narrative, the chapters read more like a series of short essays written in a vacuum.  This formula could be fascinating, except the mini-essays are so vastly different in voice, style and overall quality that it’s difficult to believe that an author could write so clearly and lyrically about the moon and then leave the reader wondering what exactly Gustav Holst has to do with Saturn. 

            The Planets is a book rife with literary risk-taking.  The problem with risks is that they often don’t work out. 

            In the essay on Mars, Sobel anthropomorphizes a Martian rock discovered on a glacier in the arctic.  Sobel speaks as the rock in order to explain the geographical history of the planet, but the voice is not consistent.  The sections of the essay told in the third person not only flow better, they are less confusing.  But as unsuccessful as first-person Mars rock is as literary device, the essay about Uranus and Neptune is a risk that works.  The text takes the form of a fictional letter sent from Caroline Herschel (sister and assistant to Sir William Herschel who discovered Uranus in 1781) to another female astronomer.  In Caroline Herschel’s well-imagined and conversational voice, Sobel recounts the discovery of Uranus and the subsequent theoretical “discovery” of Neptune before it was ever sighted through a telescope.  The essay is consequently character-driven and fascinating.

            Ironically, one of the most successful essays is not about a planet at all.  The chapter about the sun, “Genesis” is a wonderful example of Sobel’s skill at condensing complex science into simple yet precise language.  Despite the difficult source-material, the essay reads just as swiftly as the rest of the book.

Overall, The Planets reads much like the orbit of Uranus: inconsistent.  This would be difficult if not for Sobel’s skillful pacing of the book.  The reader can feel satisfied taking with him or her a few gems of knowledge and not have to miss one moment gazing at the clear night sky.