Clearly Mai Jia is a sophisticated writer at the top of his game. I very much enjoyed the varying perspectives and writing techniques that drove the story forward. The diary/notebook entries at the end completed the feeling that the story was always as I took it to be, an incomplete picture of the main character's whole life history including the important foundations and family that pre-dated his birth.

The emotional and philosophical perspective on those involved in cryptography and code-breaking was interesting, but for me personally I found the more technical aspects that were not even really alluded to made it all kind of lop-sided.

I've not read many Chinese authors, but like the others before Decoded, I felt that I was missing a lot of cultural and historical references that would have made the writing more satisfying.