The Last House in the Galaxy by Andy Secombe

Major Matt Fripp is on a mission to retrieve the Helian Cartogram, an ancient map of the universe. This he does, but the dastardly Gologons are on his tail, so he flees – accidentally travelling through a wormhole to the gardens of Hambledon Hall in rural Devon.

It's the perfect place (thinks Fripp's companion, General Glaak Raffin of the rat-like Argusians) for the peoples of the United Planets Federation to meet and plan to strike back against the Gologons. They just have to hide their existence from the hall's owners. And Fripp has to go back through the wormhole to find the Cartogram, which he lost on the way to Earth; but not without a quick detour to rescue his beloved Mariella from the clutches of Gulgus Filch, leader of the Gologons...

In these days when there seem to be so many unfunny genre comedies about, it is such a pleasure to read one by an author who knows what he's doing. Andy Secombe doesn't waste time on redundant exercises like trying to milk genre clichés for laughs; nor does he neglect to give us a good story. In fact, the story is one of the great strengths of The Last House in the Galaxy. This is one of those genre comedies where the jokes don't come thick and fast, but the tale has room to breathe. In particular, there are some neat action set-pieces, which is most unusual in comic SF and fantasy.

But don't let this make you think that Secombe has forgotten to put some humour in his book. There are some smart one-liners ('Their monitoring equipment is a lot less sophisticated than ours, which means it works.'), and some nice comic ideas. However, the jokes don't always work (after Fripp recovers from an anaesthetic, he has a habit of getting words wrong, a running gag which I found quite tedious), and there are no great belly-laughs to be had.

That's not the only problem with the novel. The characters sometimes seem interchangeable, and the flippant tone can mask serious issues: Fripp is afraid to see someone kill in 'a cold, calculated fashion' towards the end of the book; but thinks nothing of lopping off some heads a hundred pages earlier. Yet Secombe makes nothing of this. Still, The Last House in the Galaxy is a superior space romp and, if it never makes your ribs ache, it does keep you reading to the very end, raising chuckles all the while. I suspect that this is not the last we'll see of these characters, and their return would be welcome. Start reading about them now.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

Andy Secombe

Tor UK