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The Knight and the Moth is the first book in The Stonewater Kingdom, a new gothic/romantic fantasy series by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Gillig. This was one of my most anticipated books of 2025 because One Dark Window, the author’s debut novel and the first book in The Shepherd King duology, was a fun, difficult-to-put-down story—and, as such, was one of my favorite books of 2022. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in The Knight and the Moth, which kept me just curious enough to finish it but did not make me curious enough to continue the series.
In the world of The Stonewater Kingdom, there are gods known as Omens and a cathedral with magical spring waters where Divinations are performed. A woman known as Six is one of these Diviners, and like the others, she was brought to the cathedral as a foundling. Since then, her life has been confined to a small world mainly consisting of the abbess, her five sisters in Divination, and the gargoyles who serve at the cathedral. For nearly ten years, Six has been routinely drowned in the springs to enable her to dream of the Omens, sharing her visions and interpretations with those visitors who pay to learn of what she sees.
When the new king unexpectedly visits to ask whether the Omens favor him, Six takes an immediate dislike to one of his knights, who does not seem to have much respect for Diviners and their calling. But when the other Diviners start disappearing in the middle of the night, Six ends up seeking help from the new king—who sends the knight who infuriates her to her aid. Six, accompanied by the cathedral’s strangest gargoyle, is then drawn into the king and his two closest knights’ own quest involving the Omens as she seeks to keep her promise to find her sisters.
Though The Stonewater Kingdom and The Shepherd King are two different series, I couldn’t help but compare the first book in each since they had some broad similarities, and I ended up feeling like The Knight and the Moth strayed from the strengths of One Dark Window while leaning into its weaknesses. It didn’t have the same sort of atmosphere, tension, and entertaining dynamics between characters that made the first novel compelling—but it did have the same sort of questionable worldbuilding, just without the interesting lore and sense of mystery that made the first book engaging enough that it didn’t bother me overly much. While the author’s first novel hooked me immediately with its promising secrets, this one felt rote as it introduced the basics of the world through a lengthy speech given before the king’s Divination.
Unfortunately, I did not think The Knight and the Moth improved later. The plot became repetitive as the quest took characters to different areas of the kingdom to follow the same basic formula, and these parts seemed rushed as they resolved too quickly and easily. By the time I reached the end, I felt like the worldbuilding and characterization had potential but were a bit of a mess as executed, and though there were aspects I liked, there wasn’t anything I felt was strong enough to completely make up for these shortcomings.
In general, the worldbuilding seemed underdone. There were some intriguing ideas related to Diviners and Divinations, but a lot of information was conveyed through infodumps, plus these elements would have benefited from more fleshing out to make its concepts work better. The attitudes of the Diviners themselves felt especially muddled to me since they seemed to consider themselves holy and worthy of awe one moment and then not so different from anyone else the next. Of course, things like this can be complex and can change depending on the current situation, but this was not handled in a way that made this seem like a possibility—especially since the people the Diviners met often started out treating them with reverence and then quickly turned to being rude and demanding, making others’ views of them feel muddled as well.
In many ways, it felt too much like there was someone clearly trying to get things from point A to point B without necessarily going through the setup and development required to make it work. It didn’t especially bother me that many of the Diviners regularly broke the rules to have fun over the years, but I did find it odd that they all had spent nearly 10 years following the one rule the author obviously wanted to use to build suspense. And Six’s journey, which had the pieces for a compelling personal arc, also felt like it glossed over too much in getting her from her starting point to her ending point.
In addition to the romance and quest, Six’s story is that of someone who has been isolated and taught a specific worldview throughout her life only to finally have the veil lifted from her eyes once she sees more of the world. I often love these types of arcs, but I felt like this one rushed through too much to be impactful. We didn’t really see Six’s life before the king’s visit that changed everything in the first chapter, and I didn’t think it showed us enough about who Six was before she left the cathedral. She’s said to be close to the other five Diviners, and that makes perfect sense since they’ve spent nearly 10 years serving together at the cathedral, but I didn’t find the scenes we got with them effective at making them seem more than superficially close since none of the relationships felt especially vibrant. Considering her love for her sisters and desire to find them is her whole motivation for leaving the cathedral, I would have liked to have seen more of the bonds they supposedly shared instead of feeling like just enough was added to try to get across that they were close. That was a pattern with her character development: just giving a little bit of reasoning for it without making it feel real.
The romance also developed too suddenly without making it clear why these two characters were a good fit for each other, beyond being in the same vicinity and finding each other attractive. Though I enjoyed where their relationship ended up with the two supporting each other (and that the knight admired this woman’s strength and muscles, something I haven’t often come across in my reading), their initial animosity and turn to romance felt forced and rushed. Six was supposed to be the abbess’s favorite Diviner since she was most concerned with doing her duties and following the rules, but she almost immediately decided to rebel in the beginning because some random knight she just met told her she didn’t know how to have fun and she wanted to prove him wrong. This sudden enmity prompting her to behave differently than usual seemed very orchestrated, and I felt like these two came together because it was following the vibes of a romance plot rather than because it worked naturally: though it had the beats for a good hatred-to-love arc, it was missing the heart.
For all my problems with it, I did think that The Knight and the Moth had potential and could have been a good novel with some tightening. As I wrote at the beginning, it kept me interested enough in where it was going to finish reading it. (This was mostly because of a theory I had about the loyal gargoyle, who was easily the best character with the best lines even if I felt his shtick with mixing up words in common phrases could be a bit overdone at times.) But in the end, I didn’t care enough about the characters or learning more about their world to want to read the next book in the series.
My Rating: 4/10
Where I got my reading copy: ARC from the publisher.
Read an Excerpt from The Knight and the Moth
