“Omally groaned. "It is
the end of mankind as we know it. I should never have got up so early
today" and all over Brentford electrical appliances were beginning to
fail...' Could it be that Pooley and Omally, whilst engaged on a round of
allotment golf, mistook laser-operated gravitational landing beams for the
malignant work of Brentford Council? Does the Captain Laser Alien Attack
machine in the bar of the Swan possess more sinister force than its magnetic
appeal for youths with green hair? Is Brentford the first base in an alien
onslaught on planet Earth?”
The second book in the series
–and seemly not connected to the first book, which gives me the impression each
book is a sort-of-reset or stand-alone (we’ll see) escapade – The Brentford
Triangle continues the misadventures of Pooley and OMally, the town of
Brentford and eccentric characters that inhabit this universe. These two are
not real heroes in any sense of the word, but it seems adventure is drawn to
them instead of stumbling upon it. Much like the first book, the plot is a bit
incredulous –an alien invasion is about to happen when the natives of Ceres,
which was once the fifth planet in our solar system before it exploded and
became a dwarf planet inside our asteroid belt, return thousands of years later
to reclaim it. But that becomes less important than goings on at the vegetable allotment and goings on with a video game console at the Flying Swan.
The book is wry, with dry
British humor, and is faster paced than the first book. Both Pooley and OMally
(and the eccentric Time Lord-ish Professor Slocombe) are likeable. Still, while
I understand this book was released forty years ago, it features some unnecessary
moments of casual racism and homophobia. And while it’s possible for people to
be this way, in such a humorous fantasy that is not that complex to begin with,
it seems out of place then and more even now. And none of these things actually
effected the plot, so there seemed to be no need for them to be there in the
first place.
So Robert Rankin lost a bit luster here for me. I hope as I read other books by him, this aspect does not resurface, but we’ll see. Otherwise, it’s an enjoyable read, with some cleverness added to the less-than-original idea.
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