Araminta Station - Cadwal Chronicles Book #1 (azw3,epub,mobi,pdf) - Jack Vance

The planet "Cadwal" is forever set aside as a natural perserve, owned and administered by the Naturalist Society of Earth, and inhabited by a very limited number of skilled human scientists and their families. But this system has been complicated by the passing centuries, and has become a byzantine culture where every place in the Houses of Cadwal is the object of savage competition.