The ideas were all here and with more manipulation and time it might have been something really interesting, but as it is now, it's hard to comprehend.

There are way too many characters POVs, for one thing. I couldn't keep up with half of who was who and then there were spies so they were going by multiple names... it was so confusing.

The plot was also sort of nonexistent. If you want to have an evil, looming empire, you need more substance than this. The rest of the world was so detached that the stakes never felt very high for anything going on. The "mystery" was also uninteresting to the point of being a chore that had to be checked off by the end of the story.