To Play the King

The second book in the House of Cards trilogy picks up almost immediately after the ending of the first. Francis Urquhart has just become Prime Minister and sets about taking on the Monarchy and Royal Family in an attempt to establish total control over the destiny of Great Britain. The story is solid and the ending, while somewhat predicitable, is wonderfully written and genuinelly good. However, I have a number of issues with this book which prevents me from giving it a higher rating. Firstly, Dobbs at no point in his first book mentions that the Regency is changing or on the cusp of changing. He simply announces at the beginning of the book that "oh by the way, there's a new King now", which in and of itself is fine, it just seems somewhat unrealistic that this wouldn't have come up during Urquhart's election campaign of the first book. My second issue is the introduction of Tim Stamper. An awesome character and a great addition to the book, but once again completely randomly introduced with no prior reference in the first book. We are told here that Stamper and Urquhart are a formidable partnership and that Stamper had played an integral and indespensible role in Urquhart's campaign to become Prime Minister. Once again, this is entirely possible, I just find that Dobbs' introduction of the characer could have been better handled. My third, final and ultimately biggest issue with this book is a continuation of the problem which arose in the first. This book is crying out for a proof reader. Bad spelling, completely wrong words in the wrong places in sentences and grammar that would leave a literature scholar trembling all serve to dimish what is otherwise a solid book. It reflects badly on the author and also on the Publisher Harper Collins, of whom I frankly would expect better. However, don't misunderstand me, I still enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people interested in the series. Just be prepared for the pitfalls listed above.