The Starlit Prince was probably almost a 3.5 star read for me. It's a decently, solid story with good characters. It has strong thematic elements running through and an interesting world.
But that world isn't delved into with much depth. There's so much more it could have explored and explained. It felt like skimming through the world rather than stepping into it.
The plot isn't terribly strong. There's a good bit of rehashing the same plot thread and the same emotions in the first third. That improves as the characters shift through the story. Though there isn't much plot in the middle (scenes that change the story). There are events that happen along the way where things happen but nothing changes, until it does.
The biggest thing that kept this out of the 3.5 stars range is that I had a hard time with the direction of things. Men on the other side of the room (are there one or two?) and going through canvas flaps of tents (are they going in or out?). It gets worse in action scenes (she's standing over his fallen body but…he never actually fell down? and people are flying, never come down and then leap in the air?). The lack of orientation within the world almost never worked for me through the story.
It's also, simply not spectacular. It didn't grab my attention, pull me into a fascinating world, fascinate with an evocative turn of phrase (though it does have some PRETTY GOOD words and names - it could earn the extra half star with those). It can be a good book without any of that, but just a good book. And this is definitely a good book.