After a cliffhanger ending leaves Nina in a dangerous position in the previous volume, Beasts of Abigaile volume 3 follows a fairly well-worn pace of “resolve the last volume’s conflict in the first half of the current volume, set-up the next conflict with its own cliffhanger at the end of this volume.” As many a reader will have guessed, even with her scent-disguising perfume stolen, Nina is not outed as a human to the vast majority of the luga at Abigaile and frankly it seems like she won’t even suffer any major consequences for it.
On the one hand this seems fair. As far as both Nina and the reader are aware she’s a human who is completely unconnected to the conquest of the luga ten years earlier (i.e., there shouldn’t be a problem with her specifically being human). But no consequences certainly makes the overall stakes for the series feel lower. It is also becoming more and more baffling how Nina can look like a luga, and even start transforming into something even more wolfy like the luga can, and yet still be “a human” in terms of her birth and other characteristics (like not having the luga sense of smell, in addition to her own, human scent). If Nina’s parents hadn’t been so conspicuously absent I would start placing bets on Nina being a previously-undiscussed mixed human-luga child. At this point, however, if the story does go that route to explain these previously discussed inconsistencies it’ll feel like a massive handwave.
While a lot certainly happens to Nina in the course of this volume, as she ends up in not one but two, different dangerous situations, emotionally it doesn’t seem like very much happened in this volume at all. The revelation, and then later acceptance, of Nina as a human should have changed or at least deepened her relationship with both Poe and Dario but both of them were already so attached to her in volume 2 that there really wasn’t any change at all. This volume also seems to cement and lock-in the idea that Nina will eventually end up with Roy romantically. The problem is this isn’t conveyed through their personal interactions or such, but rather shown just by the story’s continued interest in putting these two together as much as possible. I am also entertaining the idea that either Roy or Gilles (or possibly both) has a close connection to the lost king of the luga; with a cast this small Occam’s Razor isn’t even needed to deduce what’s foreshadowing and what’s fluff. The series could honestly use some more time to slow down, build out the world some more, and maybe even add in some “fluff” to fill out some of these flatter areas of the story.
That is my largest complaint with volume 3; by this point the story, the initial cast, and the stakes have all been established, so it’s time the story started focusing on “why” things are happening, not just “what” is happening. I think Beasts of Abigaile leans too heavily on the fact that frankly, almost none of the cast is in a position to know what’s going on. Again, Nina is an outsider and the rest of the cast was very young when the luga were conquered and chucked onto a remote island. It feels as if Spica Aoki is using this as a crutch to artificially increase the tension in the story and keep the characters in the dark even longer. This is the penultimate volume of the series but you wouldn’t know it by the story or the pacing. I am very interested to see if the final volume in this series manages to pull together a satisfying conclusion or if stumbles into a finale instead.