A review by mrpatperkins
House of Cards by Michael Dobbs

2.0

I decided to read House of Cards because I admire the Netflix series with Kevin Spacey, but this is one of the few times the show/movie is better than the book. Francis Urquhart lacks motivation for his quest for power, except for a weak connection to his departed father. Mattie Storin has even less development as a character, and that's it. All the other players just come and go, static and flat, offering a chess board full of pawns that can only move forward one step at a time until knocked out by the king. What Netflix has done well is give the protagonist's wife a much better developed role, establish Kevin Spacey as a powerful politician with a lust for higher power, and offer characters who seem real and feel as if they could move fluidly throughout the universe.

This book does none of that.