Zeb Larson reviews Cluster…
In the distant future, as mankind discovers life on other planets, it needs soldiers to defend its colonies across the stars. In order to increase the number of boots on the ground, criminals are offered the opportunity to serve in the place of incarceration. When a rag-tag group of prisoners become stranded on a war-torn planet, they’ll need to work together to survive and uncover the truth behind Earth’s role in deep space. Collects the complete limited series, issues #1-8.
Sci-fi is doing pretty well in comic books these days, considering that I have the luxury of choosing books I want to review. And thanks to Boom!, I can occasionally do the TPB and have the luxury of reviewing the story all at once rather than trying to make sense out of parts separate from the whole. What a relief. Cluster is an interesting and gritty book, set on a distant planet in the middle of an ugly war. Sitting down with this on a Friday night was exactly what I needed.
Samara Simmons is a young woman who has been sentenced to fifteen years as a sort of penal colonist on the planet Midlothian. In a prison full of people who think of themselves as innocent, Samara is one of the few who thinks that she’s guilty, and she thinks that helping to terraform Midlothian will be a way to unburden herself of her sins. But Midlothian is less of a purgatory and more of a Hell, with an outright war being fought between the prisoners and the Pangurians, who are determined to stop the terraforming of the planet. There are a lot of lies and half-truths to be found on this planet, and Samara quickly discovers that the enemies she thought she had are not what she was led to believe.
This book is a good read. Tossing readers into the middle of a science-fiction story can be tricky, but Brisson strikes a balance. The setting is a familiar sort of one (more on that in a bit), and there’s just enough exposition to understand the alien factions involved. But once they’re introduced, Brisson doesn’t bog the text down in too much exposition. On the contrary, he just establishes the characters and lets them do their own thing.
Past the mere business of setting the scene, the drama in this series is solid. From the very get-go, it’s made clear that Cluster is a bloody series, and it racks up an impressive bodycount of main and supporting characters through its eight issues. Characters that I sort of assumed would at least make it to the end before biting it didn’t even make it halfway through the book. Death comes quickly and without a lot of sentimentality or last words; like in real life, all it takes are one or two bullets.
There’s a great deal that I like about Brisson’s cast of characters for this series. Female-led sci-fi series are on the rise, but it’s still worth commenting that Samara’s gender is never treated as some kind of special obstacle for her to overcome. She’s allowed to simply exist as a person. They’re allowed to be funny on occasion (all of the pleas for Grace to shut up come to mind), but it’s not too often, either. We all like to think we can crack wise when we’re being shot at, but if that’s overdone in a book like this it makes the combat seem trite. If Grace is occasionally annoying because she keeps talking, I think that’s kind of the point.
The funny thing about Samara as a character is that everybody reminds her that coming to this place isn’t going to save her or absolve her of her sins. Suffering doesn’t wipe a person’s slate clean. What Samara instead discovers is that purpose is the best shot anybody has at redemption. Initially, it’s just a determination to stay alive, but as the lies about Midlothian fall away, Samara finds new purpose in working among the people around her. Paradoxically, it even starts to push her back toward a family that she cut herself off from.
The aliens we’re introduced to are relatively small in number, with perhaps four that get some kind of individual attention. Considering that they’re fighting a bitter battle against humanity, the Pangurians don’t seem all that different from us. Some of the other unnamed species are definitely alien (Slaregg being my favorite example), but I also understand the temptation to make the Pangurians similar rather than different. Apart from allowing us to avoid some sort of Dances with Wolves tangent, it emphasizes the similar plight both the human soldiers and the Pangurians are facing, humanizing them in the process.
There’s also a fair bit of biting social commentary in this series. Given the topic matter, I was actually expecting the series to get more in depth with private prisons as a topic. At a few points, it’s hinted that the prison population is full of people who were unfairly sentenced or were even innocent, but the hints are never fully expanded on. Perhaps it’s best left in the background; the optimist I’m always trying to silence thinks it might be a good hook for a sequel.
The best science-fiction looks backwards at humanity as it looks forward at the future, and this is no exception. This is a deeply ugly and cruel universe, but I think that’s the point that Brisson is trying to construct here. In doing so, he’s looking back on our own history. This is a new kind of settler imperialism, but it’s familiar in its own way too. Australia is the best-known example of a convict colony, but the truth is that North American and a great many other places were colonized by desperate people who often did not have much of a choice. The indigenous people or whoever stood in their way were seen as nothing more than obstacles, and their removal is acceptable.
One character mentions that the terraforming has killed more than 78% of the indigenous population of the planet, matching the kind of mass-death Native Americans saw in the wake of European diseases like smallpox. MID soldiers blow away Ranese without giving them a second thought, an uncomfortable reminder that the best way to get your soldiers to slaughter an enemy is if you can convince them that they’re not sub-human (a simply task when they’re not human to begin with). But they’re not that different, because both sides are actually being poisoned merely by being on the planet.
I’m all for a nice, discreet endpoint in a series, but I actually finished this and hoped it could be continued. Without spoiling or giving away the ending, it works as a finale, but one that could easily stretch into one or even two different storylines. Brisson created a large enough universe that it almost deserves to be fleshed out in another installment. Or maybe that just means I really liked this.
Rating: 9/10
Zeb Larson
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Originally published May 7, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
