Jan 20
The Last Starborn Seer
By Venetia Constantine.
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The Last Starborn Seer
By Venetia Constantine.
The Last Starborn Seer by Venetia Constantine
When Leilani, the cursed princess of a dying land, is called upon by her ancestor to go on a quest to save her world and her ailing mother, she must enlist the help of the three other realms to perform an ancient right to accomplish her task. However, old prejudices run deep, and Leilani quickly finds that everything she knows about both her plagued kingdom and her cursed magic may barely scratch the surface of an even darker truth.
Honestly, I went into this book with zero expectations and that ended up being fine because I came out of it truly neutral. While I really enjoyed the very rich, lush worldbuilding the story itself fell rather flat for me, despite my enjoyment of the writing! I do think Constantine is really a good writer, there was just something about the story itself that never really hooked me and, by the end, just sort of left me waiting for it to be over.
While I really enjoyed Leilani and Astrophel’s character arcs and growth, I felt genuinely nothing toward Blayze the literal entire book which really bummed me out because I am always cheering for the canon bisexuals. But start to finish I did not care for or about this man. Very typical romantasy love interest, which was deeply disappointing and boring.
The lore was so good and juicy but there were way too many instances of names of things with “moon” and “star” in them that keeping them straight got a little mindboggling. I get it, I get where Constantine was coming from with the naming conventions, but you really had to pay attention or things got confusing. Even I, a known moon and star lover who used to dot her i’s with crescent moons growing up, got pretty exhausted by it.
Most major plot points were incredibly predictable but it is what it is. Nothing made me particularly excited in any case so not really a huge deal, I guess.
I certainly didn’t hate the book but I didn’t love it either. True neutral but at least it WASN’T a nothing sandwich so I’ll take that as a win. I will always love lore and worldbuilding so I did lap that up but the lackluster romance kind of had me just shrugging. I’ll probably read the next book when it comes out… at some point. Definitely not something I’d be rushing to pick up but I’ll get to it eventually.
3.5/5 stars
The Last Starborn Seer Summary & Book Review: A Gripping Debut
Introduction to The Last Starborn Seer Summary & Review The book arrives in 2026 as an instant Sunday Times bestseller, and I understand why. Princess Leilani Stellarion lives as a monster in a gilded cage—the last surviving Starborn Seer in a world that reviles her kind. When a centuries-old prophecy reveals she might save her dying mother and her decaying world, she must unite four feuding…
Map of Arcenia from The Last Starborn Seer by Venetia Constantine (map by Andrés Aguirre Jurado).