I bought this book to read as part of the Open University Short course (S196 Planets: an Introduction). I really enjoyed studying the course and this book is an integral part of that. However, I read it first a couple of months before the start of the course straight through from cover to cover, and found the style a little dry. That isn't to say that it isn't a fairly readable book, there are plenty of science books that you couldn't read from end to end like that without being bored to death. Nevertheless, I would imagine that if you were simply reading the book for your own information and not with a goal in mind like studying the OU course, it might be a bit heavy going at times.
However, the book is well set out and gets across a huge amount of information in a relatively small book. Each chapter looks at a different planet and has a table of information at the beginning and is simply packed with facts about the solar system including the asteroid and Kuiper belts. It also has a brief chapter at the end about exo-planets (planets that orbit other stars). Unfortunately the vast majority of illustrations are black and white, although it has some colour plates in the middle.
I would definitely highly recommend this as a reference book, rather than one to read straight through. You can dip in and find out a remarkable amount about any of the planets in just a few pages.
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