Manga: Graineliers 3

Graineliers Vol 3 
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

Carried off to Grainelier headquarters on suspicion of being a harmful seed carrier, Luca finds himself at the mercy of Special Researcher Nicolas. But Nicolas and his ilk are not what they seem, and at the elite Grainelier's behest, Luca passes himself off as a fellow Institute researcher...only to end up cohabiting with Nicolas himself! Meanwhile, Abel, driven to rescue his childhood friend, takes up with Insecte, an anti-Grainelier group. But when a certain incident lands him in a life-or-death situation, Abel might have to focus on saving his own skin first! 

Abel is getting to grips with his new situation and even has to get to grips with a weapon of his own! Rogers is still suspicious of him and suspects him of being a spy and while we spend a leisurely chapter with Abel fitting in and adjusting to everything and so on, we also end up with the difficult choice he's going to have to make...whether or not to go with a seed and if so which one. The odds don't look that great for any of the options he has. 

Things pick up during the next chapter when Abel ends up in a tough situation thanks to some thieves, and it does give him a chance to finally bond with the ever suspicious Rogers, predictable as it was. As you can imagine we get plenty of action from this turn in the story after the initially slow start, and then the mystery is ramped up once we switch over to Luca's POV, and in Abel's POV we have the mysterious man who becomes his bodyguard before we head in to plain 'oh dear' territory. 

Lucas is obviously with Nicolas, who's all kinds of shady and creepy and the mystery around him deepens in this volume. He also seems to know something about the mystery of Luca's father but of course, he won't spill it straight away because he's infuriating like that! Luca ends up posing as one of them in a uniform and everything and he even gets to join Nicolas' team. 

Along with a sprinkle of action, danger and ramped up mystery, we get some more background on why the carrier only squads exist as well as the political climate of the world of this story and the clashes amongst countries so the world gets fleshed out even more. 

While the volume initially started a little slow it built up as we went along, weaving in some more mystery and intrigue, answering some questions we had and giving us some background and adding to the world building as we build up towards an epic showdown in the next volume. Luca is posing as Nicolas' subordinate and is potentially about to have a moral crisis while Abel is trying to protect someone and might have to realise the fact that he can't with his current sills. I feel the story is developing so far at a nice pace, giving us action and building up the plot with a nice balance.