I picked up this book specifically because it’s Ursula le Guin, she’s written a lot of books and all the ones I’ve read have been very good, I found this was the odd one out and I should explain.

Changing Planes is a series of short stories written as if for the tourist industry, whether by travel agents for as blogs is irrelevant. The idea behind the book is that when you’re sitting in an airport, bored, uncomfortable and waiting for a flight that’s delayed by several hours it has been discovered to be possible to slip from that hard, plastic chair to somewhere else, another plane and explore the countryside, eat and get to know the locals.

I found the book rather slow and boring until one story just had to be tongue-in-cheek and I realised the whole book was probably tongue-in-cheek and I’d missed this vital fact. In fact, when I look back into the book she makes mention of this in her Author’s Note. It doesn’t help much as I still found the whole book to be boring and hard to read. Each story was about a different plane so when one became too boring I could just force myself to finish the final page or two and then move on.

Normally le Guin has lots of excitement and adventure but this book seems to have been written in the same style as someone sitting in an airport awaiting a flight that’s been delayed several hours. It’s slow, very descriptive and doesn’t have much excitement. Although, I’m not sure how much excitement I’d expect from a travel book and this is essentially a travel book.

If you’re a fan of le Guin I’d certainly recommend it as so many people want to complete reading the set. Don’t expect to be excited, do expect sarcasm and lots of descriptive passages.