I know three stars is a decent review, and this book certainly doesn't deserve any less, but I'm still pretty disappointed. I'm sure it's because my hopes for this were sky-high! But for whatever reason, this left me kind of cold. It was a very adequate book, I neither loved it nor hated it. Maia was a great character, sure, but I never got a feel for any of the others. The "byzantine court intrigues" were actually straightforward to the point of being silly ... (view spoiler)[as in, the obviously evil Lord Chancellor and obviously power-hungry dowager princess literally kidnap the emperor from his bed, hand him a form to sign saying he'll abdicate, and then are surprised when he says "no"? Or the also-obviously-evil duke who straight up CHARGES at the emperor and tries to stab him ON HIS THRONE IN FRONT OF AN ENTIRE BALLROOM FULL OF PEOPLE after telling more than one person on his way up that "hey, I'm going to go kill the emperor now"? (hide spoiler)] 
 I also felt like there was a lot of "telling, not showing" going on. Csevet, the first person Maia meets from the court, just happens to be the best secretary ever after Maia asks him directions to a room and then just decides to never send him away. Maia's nieces and nephew immediately latch onto him as a beloved uncle despite having never met him. I don't know, it was all so very ... convenient. I almost felt like the point of the book was the descriptions of Maia's jewelry, clothing, letter-writing, and showing off Elven vocabulary, and the story itself was an afterthought. 
 Like I said up top, three stars isn't bad. This isn't a bad book. I just don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone. 
 2016 reading challenge: a book with nonhuman characters