The story centers around Danaba, the sole heir of a grief-stricken emperor who allowed the development of political intrigue, shady alliances and plans to overtake his reign, due to his inability to act as leader after his sons death ten years ago.
The writing occasionally tripped me up. Sometimes, there were sentences that were repeated word for word only a couple of lines apart. Often, the same scene would be described multiple times, from the same or sometimes different points of view, however usually without adding much to the book. Additionally, the pacing was odd and confusing. There was an overall sense of urgency to everything, yet sometimes there would be months in between scenes. Developments that were happening outside of these scenes or wasn't part of the storyline around the main characters sometimes remained unclear.
Storywise, it centered around political intrigues and feeble alliances, which I as a reader could never really fully understand because of the complicated world building. And you never really got a sense for the characters, even those that were part of the main POV. They changed their minds and alliances in between scenes and without much understandable motivation.
Overall, this book remained a confusing read all the way through. However, the story still somehow gripped me, so I can't really rate the book too negatively. I personally would not read the sequel(s) though. (And yes, all storylines remain mainly unresolved due to this being probably a first part of a series).

This started out like a strong palace drama, worthy of a CDrama, then petered out quickly into a mass of made up words and terms that made it hard to understand, I get this is supposed to be an alien world, cultures, and species, but using terms familiar to the reader makes the story readable.