A review by hearth_hobbit
Karmen by Guillem March

dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Genre: Paranormal, Science Fiction

TW: Nudity, Death, Suicide

1.5 Stars: I didn’t like it

Summary: Karmen is an entity tasked with shepherding souls to the afterlife. Assigned to a newly deceased woman named Catalina, Karmen assists her as she does with everyone but for some reason this mission specifically is different from the rest. 

Thoughts (spoilers): The idea for this story is interesting but I don’t love the way it was executed. The plot was pretty standard and the ending was pretty cliche. 

Artistically, this graphic novel is 10/10.  From her x-ray look to her hair to her face, Karmen’s design is very cool. The way bodies were drawn was expert level. I’ve had to do figure drawing in school and it is not easy so I admire the skill of being able to accurately render a human figure. It was necessary too because the two main characters were naked and wearing a skin tight suit.

I had a lot of issues with Catalina as a character. First, I think the idea that someone would kill themselves because their crush didn’t feel the same about them is wild. Second, I think it's a weird choice to have the main character be naked nearly the entirety of the story. Karmen is able to conjure bandages for Catalina at one point in the story but doesn’t create clothes for Catalina even when she’s clearly uncomfortable with being naked. It just seemed like an excuse to have a naked woman on the page and I don’t think that would have bothered me so much if this story wasn’t about death and suicide.

While Karmen looks amazing, there’s not a whole lot going on under the surface. There’s a subplot about the other entities that are like Karmen and how shepherding souls is just a soulless job for them and how they’re pursuing some kind of work “bonus” and Karmen is the only one who truly cares about the souls. I think that had potential for being interesting and it probably is explored more later in the series. Personality wise, I think the author was going for a seemingly airheaded type of character that is actually very wise underneath it all and all the chaos that Karmen creates is all for some cosmic reason that we only figure out in the end. Typically I really like that type of character but I felt it wasn’t executed well in this story.

Overall I think more time could’ve been spent on the writing. I feel like it was almost good but it fell short. I probably will not continue with this series.