If Boone trusts the person who referred him to Warren, I wonder why Boone doesn’t even stop to consider that Warren might be right about the Galienns being involved with the kidnapping. Plus, I wonder about Warren. Obviously informants are going to be a bit underhanded in charging for information, and are going to like leading their customers on, but I imagine at some point they must get down to business and start giving out something valuable, or nobody would come to them as informants. Hard to make a business when everyone ignores you ‘cause you’re difficult. Or if you end up dead in a ditch because you’re an informant that no one likes.
It’s fine that you’re not telling us everything about Boone’s thing with the tapping, but you made a big enough deal out of it that I was expecting to see it resolved or explained, and it wasn’t. We have no idea what the tapping allowed him to do, or whether it’s one of the Birthrights, or what (though I assumed it was). I think just knowing what he got out of it in that situation would be enough to justify the time you spent on it. Alternatively, if you don’t want to tell us, you could trim that back a bit. I don’t think you need to get it entirely, but if you took that paragraph and trimmed it back to, say, “Once again, he had been able to pass the tapping off as a mere habit. Every advantage counted, no matter how small.”
Or, well, okay. Something less choppy and making more sense than what I just hacked it to. But you get the idea.
I don’t really have much else to add, except that maybe the prose can be tightened up a bit. Not something to worry much about now, but I like to keep these things in the back of my mind even while writing the first draft – just being conscious of it can do a lot in terms of readability of even a first draft, in my experience.
Still enjoying the read. Keep it up.
