Zare’s review of The Shadow Intelligence Protocol (The Digital Shadows Book 1) > Likes and Comments

Hi Zare,

Thank you for taking the time to write such a considered review. Honest feedback from someone who actually reads in the genre is worth more than a stack of five-star reviews from people who skimmed the blurb.

You're right about the spy-craft dialogue. Looking back at the original text, my characters do speak operational-requirement at each other like they've all just come out of the same training course and can't quite drop the textbook. People who live inside a profession don't narrate it to each other. They use shorthand, they cut corners, they assume the other person knows. I'd lost sight of that.

You're also right about the repetition. Some of it came from drafting habits, some from the editorial process not catching what it should have. Either way, a reader shouldn't be encountering the same observation twice in fifty pages, let alone on the facing one.

This is my first novel, and the feedback has been genuinely useful rather than just bruising. I've reworked the manuscript to address much of what you've identified; tightening the dialogue, cutting the repetition, thinning out the waterfront-at-sunset moments before they tipped fully into self-parody. The reissued edition is now live.

The same lessons are shaping Book Two, The Network Deception Paradox, which I'm working towards publishing soon. So your review has already done more than rate one book. It's improved the next one.

Thanks again for the time and the care. It mattered.

Gari

I am glad my feedback helped, I never doubted style will evolve and improve with follow up works. What draw me to the book to begin with is that it was about for me unknown parts of the world. It is always refreshing to read something new, see different worldviews and takes on politics that drive spy stories :) And combination of Australia/Asia political intrigue, especially during the closing days of Cold War, and early years of technology, that now dominates life of everyone on the planet, sounds just awesome. We do not get many works from Australia in my neck of woods, and those I have read are great, but none were from spy/thriller genre, so this book (and series to follow) was wonderful discovery. Happy to come across your work, and cannot wait for new stories to arrive!