Review: Dark Child: Episode 1 by Adina West
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 12, 2013
I received a free copy of this book in return for an honest review as part of the Read for Review program run by the Never to old for Y.A Books Goodreads Group.This first instalment in the episodic based tale The Dark Child by Adina West is a good one. It introduces us to Kat Chanter, a pathology technician, who has always been a little bit different. Drawn to the academic realm at school primarily from self preservation (her physical abilities were well beyond the norm of her class mates) she has an affinity with blood and spends her days testing, scrutinisinng and disccovering the secrets it holds. Kat begins to experience some strange symptoms and decides to run some tests on her own blood. The results are rather startling and kick start a course of events that she would never have predicted.I went into reading this with the full understanding it was an episode based story. I was actually attracted to the idea of reading a short snippet and then moving on to something else to return to the next episode in the story later. I think it's a little unfair that other reviewers have criticised the story being episode based as the description very clearly identifies that is the case.Episode 1 is well written and provided enough for me to want to move on to Episode 2. I was intrigued by Amarok and wanted to discover a lot more about him and his role as Kat's protector and I also wanted to know more about Kat's father and precisely what her heritage may be. A very quick read, and very much part of a bigger story, that you will enjoy if you are comfortable with the instalment approach taken (noting that there is an Omnibus Edition available that essentially combines all of the episodes into one book for those that have a preference for that approach).