Despite some reservations I had, I honestly couldn't put this book down. I started it late last night with the intention of reading half of it, and finished it about 4:30 this morning. 
 So here's what I liked about the book: the pace. It started off a little slow, but in a good way. I wanted to keep reading because I was enjoying the character interactions, I liked Darrow and Eo especially, and whenever I finished a boring part that would allow me to put the book down it was because a far more interesting part was starting. 
 The writing was pretty good. Not the best writing, as it ignores some of the limitations of first-person POV, but it was good enough that I didn't get annoyed too often. Biggest issue there was that the dialogue was occasionally a bit stilted, but dialogue was hard. 
 Darrow makes mistakes and learns from them. Do I need to go into details from this? He learns! It's beautiful! Go Darrow! 
 The worldbuilding was kind of awesome. I love terraforming SO HARD, and I'm glad this wasn't another post-apocalypse set on Earth. I'm equally glad that so many other planets (and comets!) are mentioned as being places that humanity has terraformed and now inhabit. I want to know what these other planets (and comets!) are like. How do they differ from Mars? What plants and animals are unique to those places? Do the Carvers of the other planets make creatures besides deerlings and the crazy bears? I wanna knowwww. (So, yes, I'll be getting the rest of the trilogy if only because worldbuilding.) 
 What didn't I like? First of all, most of the characters weren't terribly fleshed out. Eo and Darrow seemed real, even Darrow's uncle had hidden depths! And then the rest of the characters were just...bland. They all seemed to have one characteristic that defined them, and there wasn't any room in their personalities for anything else. Worst of all, the women seemed to fall into two distinct categories: nearly emotionless warrior-women, or useless simpering idiots who can't do anything without men at their sides. Sigh. 
 The "school" is...another arena where humanity has decided their best option is to send their children to kill each other? Uh? What is this strange trend in YA literature right now? I honestly just don't get this scenario, but, okay, I'll roll with it. At least it only seems to happen once in the series. And they're not, like, eleven years old. So I guess it could've been worse. I was just not expecting a war arena. 
 What is with all the rape!? I don't even see how it was necessary to write about it, because it's only used as a plot point for Darrow's development, and that's just, well, fucked up. I'm not going to rant about this, though, mostly because I'm not nearly coherent enough today to manage it well. I just wanted to throw in that I wasn't impressed by the old Rape For Manpain tactic being used YET FUCKING AGAIN. Ugh. Men. 
 ...I'm still going to read the rest of the series, though.