Soma follows the story of a comic book artist named Maya who is struggling with her creative output and wondering if her current life is really the one she ought to pursue. We also follow her friend Juu who is trying to find the perfect girlfriend but has trouble with the dates he has met up with so far. When an alien army attacks Earth, Maya must team up with one of the aliens trying to prevent the attack, while Juu does whatever he can to survive.

I enjoyed this graphic novel and thought the premise was super creative. The artwork was fantastic! It was really colorful, utilizing a lot of the primary colors (mostly red, yellow, blue, and green in various shades). I liked that if multiple characters spoke on a page, it was clear who was talking because each character was assigned a color for their speech bubble. I also really liked the style that the characters were drawn in.

What I found a little bit jarring were the constant scene changes; there was no indication that we were switching between Maya's perspective, Maya's comics, and Juu's perspective. It just changed page to page. It also was not always clear to me what was going on. I have a vague idea of how the ending occurred but nothing was quite clear, so I'm wondering if information or context was lost in translation. I also found Maya's character to look awfully similar to the other female character that Juu meets, and for the entirety of the book I thought the child Juu meets was a girl...until the last scene where we see the character topless in a boys bathing suit. So I think there could have been more character distinction, because really there are only around 6 characters total, and it should be easy to tell them apart. There could have also been a bit more character development, as I'm not sure how the 2 girls Juu met were related(mother/daughter or sisters?) These aspects led me to remove a star from the rating, but other than that, the graphic novel was super enjoyable to read!

I think this could be great for teen and adult audiences, and is in the sci-fi genre.

4/5 stars Thank you to NetGalley and Oni Press for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.

SOMA was an excellent graphic novel! I devoured it in one sitting. I did find the storyline a little confusing at times, but I like the mix of real world and the main character's internal worlds (when she was drawing comics). It was wild, would make a great movie!!