I've read a few of these young-adultish-fantasy-unlikely-scion-become-ruler books recently, and The Goblin Emperor is definitely one of them.

When the current emperor and his three sons are killed in an airship crash, Maia is elevated from disgraced exile to emperor. He has to deal with his abusive guardian, a high chancellor who plainly dislikes him, and the conspiracy that killed his father, with nary a friend at court. Worse, it is an empire of Elves, and Maia is half-goblin through his mother, a political marriage that didn't work out at all.

The story and setting kind of limp along. There's magic, because this is fantasy. Steampunk, because zeppelins are cool. Politics, because politics make fantasy smart. But none of it really connects. Maia is cast in the role of the sensible modern person in an archaic and sometimes cruel system, but without much ferocity. The key flaw is that Maia and his allies are good and decent people, and his opponents corrupt, evil, and mad. This is not a contest of anything approaching ideologies. Rather, it's good-guy factions and bad-guy factions, and too many indistinguishable Elven names.

Read City of Brass instead.