For once I actually have good and bad things to say.

Let's start with the bad.
In a lot of other science fiction, the science/science-fiction part is vague and full of impossible made-up technology so it's really more fantasy in space but pretending to be futuristic science.
Not so in this one. Instead, this one confidently and boldly just gets actual science horribly wrong all over the place. Strangely it gets a lot of the most clichéed bad sci-fi science right and it seems like the author knows what she is talking about. But then she makes a large number of less common mistakes. Like space suits needing heating against the frigid temperatures of space. It's actually exactly the other way around. Space suits struggle to get rid of the natural body heat of the wearer because a vacuum is a horrible medium for heat transfer. Another much more embarrassing mistake is the notion of radiation-eating bacteria which one of the protagonists supposedly invented. While it is in itself not an entirely absurd idea and I think there actually are bacteria that can gain energy from ionizing radiation, these sci-fi bacteria can supposedly protect a person against all ionizing radiation including cosmic rays. This reveals an utter lack of understanding of how radiation works.
So if you are looking for accurate and well-researched science, either current or futuristic, you will not have a good time here.
Furthermore, the book uses futuristic technologies not as part of the world-building but almost exclusively as one-time plot devices without considering the implications such technologies should have had on society.
All the different societies we encounter in this book are basically just current modern humans but with more extensive body modifications tacked on as well as gene enhancements etc. But this aspect is also very surface level and doesn't actually penetrate into society. It's mostly just a visual you would expect from futuristic humans and a reason for super-human abilities.
So if you are out for consistent and intricate world-building or any kind of discussion of how human society might deal with all the implications of futuristic technologies you will be mostly disappointed here too. There are a few aspects that seem like the author actually put a lot of thought into them and on their own, they are pretty good but these individual well-thought-out aspects, again, don't properly mesh with the rest.

Now to the good. The characters are interesting and have depth. They have different voices and complex emotions. The book seems better at properly portraying moral shades of grey than 99% of what I have read. People are primarily not good or bad but just people that act in a way they think is right. I felt like, even if I don't agree with the action of a character, I can still empathize with his motivations and reasons for doing things. This is very rare. Sadly the book just kind of ends without completing any kind of story arch. It's not a cliffhanger but it's still a very unsatisfying end. This is to say that I am not sure if I am prematurely praising this story but so far I had a very good feeling about the character work and it appears as if the author took a lot of care in crafting an interesting and unique cast of characters to tell an intriguing story.

I personally get a bit frustrated at sci-fi getting science so utterly and embarrassingly wrong. But I can usually look past that. What annoyed me a lot more was the lack of consistent world-building and how the book completely fails to account for the impact all these different technologies would have on humanity. It does a decent job around genetics in this regard but it forgets about most of the rest.
If you want fantastic stuff. Then just write science-fantasy. Yes, this is a genre. It's magic in space. Then, if you need a McGuffin for some reason or another you can just hand-wave it as magic. It's not the most elegant writing of course but it's miles better than just flat-out making up wrong science.

I will still try out the second book but I am a bit skeptical.

Edit:
The first story arch is completed after the first two books but it's very open-ended still.
Sadly the number of inconsistencies and outright plotholes skyrockets throughout the second book. Even the protagonists become very inconsistent in their thoughts and behavior and their personalities and motivations get bent into origami sometimes to enable the plot to follow its pre-planned route. This pretty much killed the one enjoyable aspect I found in the first book. The main plot really doesn't have enough going for it to keep me interested on its own but the author gave up on everything else for the sake of the plot. ( )

Better than most

So much of modern SF isn't... So many new novels are Action/Drama with no regard for consistency (in other words, full of plot errors and out of character actions for the sake of EXCITEMENT. This book had a moment or two like that, but it wasn't egregious enough for me to toss to the bin without finishing. ( )

I absolutely love Casmir and Kim's dynamic! And there are just some bizarrely funny moments. ( )

Read this series on a long bus ride. An absolutely stunning lack of understanding of what radiation is and how it works. And, for something as central to this story as radiation, it's a major plot hole.

Very stilted and awkward dialog. No one talks like that.

Copious "as you know, Bob" moments. Tons. Plethora. Lots. ( )