Cryptic crossword No 2,906

Hi all, welcome to my first puzzle. I've only been solving cryptics myself for about half of a year, so I'm certain that the regulars here will blitz the grid with ease. My focus as a setter is largely on producing elegant surface readings (I'll worry more about the difficulty of the grids as I improve both as a solver and a setter), but any feedback is appreciated (even if it's brutal -- perhaps especially if it's brutal!). Sorry for no annotations, still working on that portion. Cheers!

Congratulations on your first crossword, some nice surfaces, though there were some where I got the answer, but not sure why!

Welcome to MyCm NMD, and thanks for an enjoyable puzzle! There's lots of good stuff in here - and no shortage of interesting ideas. I wasn't able to parse some of the clues, so if you were able to include annotated solutions, that would be helpful. As is often the case, I felt that the best clues were those that were more concise and where the wordplay was completely accurate. In particular, I would put 12a, 18a, 5d, 7d, 16d and 27d into that category. Spoilers ...

Thanks NMD & welcome to MyC. This was fun & I liked clues such as 12a, 7d, & 16d. I missed 13d & couldn't parse 9a & 23a. More in reply (the place where specific feedback & 'spoilers' are discussed).