I have a very conflicting relationship with this book, and so I'm giving it 3.5 stars. 
 On one hand I still have no idea what happenes 1/3 of the time. Everytime a battle or big tactical talks were happening I was LOST. There were so many words from that world sometimes used in the same sentence... It made it impossible for me to understand what it meant in context or... anything. 
 Also, I have to point out my native language isn't english and it might not have helped. I read a lot in english, in 2016 I read more than 25 000 pages of books in english. I can read sci fi and fantasy in english : no problem. However, it still happens that I encounter a word I don't know or don't remember the meaning of. In that case usually I get it in context and it doesn't slow me down. But in this book... I did find a fez words I wasn't sure of but with all that SF vocabulary around it... I didn't understand it AND it didn't help to understand the SF vocab either. So yeah, even for good level english readers sometimes it's just too much to handle. 
 On the other hand, I really really enjoy the whole relationship between Jedao and Cheris. All those discussions, all the guessing for "is he going to betray her ?! what's his agenda ?" ... They were 2 very interesting characters in a very enjoyable (for the reader, def NOT for them) position. It was awesome and I might just read book 2 to see what happens even though I will still not understand half of it aha. Or maybe I will read this one again and understand more of it. I won't repeat what has already been said about this book : it doesn't feed you any information, you have to get it, and really commit (Maybe I wasn't 100% in it myself ? At some point I just wanted to get it over with and screw trying to read the same paragraphe 3 times). 
 I'm curiously pretty proud of myself for finishing this, getting 2/3 of it and mostly not giving up halfway through. Even if I could only appreciate part of the story it was still damn enjoyable.