Rating this smack dab in the middle - the premise was excellent, the parallel to war was on point, and some of the characters absolutely gripped me.... But it felt more like an unpolished draft than other dystopian books I've read and loved, plus the racism, misogyny, and homophobia are off the charts in ways that don't feel entirely attributable to the characters themselves. I liked the ending, but there's a lot left to be desired in the execution. Probably not surprising for his first novel. I did like it more than other books of his I've read, in large part because it doesn't have women characters who are significant enough to be as thoroughly mistreated as in some of the others.