The Knight and the Moth

• Author: Rachel Gillig
• Genre: Fantasy/Romantasy
• Publication Date: May 20, 2025
• Publisher: Orbit
• Series: The Stonewater Kingdom #1

Thank you to Orbit and Oliver Wehner for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

From BookTok sensation and NYT bestselling author Rachel Gillig, comes the next big romantasy phenomenon: a gothic, mist-cloaked tale of a prophetess who is forced beyond the safety of her cloister on an impossible quest to defeat the gods with the one knight whose future is beyond her sight.

Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.

Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil’s visions. But when Sybil’s fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.

I have begun feeling like I’m caught up in an echo chamber when it comes to Rachel Gillig’s books. Her debut book had me ready to add her to my need-everything-she-writes list. And that was before the stunning conclusion to the series. I jumped at the chance to get an ARC copy, because of course I did. In a stunning turn of events, Julie @ One Book More got me to read this one way ahead of time, and I couldn’t be more happy to shout about this book so that y’all can put in your preorders if you haven’t already.

Just the first few lines of this book had me practically drooling to read more. And it only got better from there. When it comes to Gillig’s writing, there are so many strengths that it is so hard to pick just one or two, and I really struggled to find any part of the story that didn’t work for me.

In this book, Gillig has built a whole new fantasy world, one that intrigued me right from the time I saw a summary for this book. The centerpiece is Aisling, a temple built around a spring, where every ten years, six foundlings are brought to become Diviners—a concept which sounds at least vaguely similar to how Oracles were used in ancient Greece—and tasked with spending the next ten years of their lives confined to the tor at Aisling and working as intermediaries between the gods, who speak through the dreams  of the girl.

But as always, with great power comes great … restrictions. The six Diviners are not allowed to show their eyes, wearing a shroud covering them, and can’t leave Aisling Tor. They’re watched over by the abbess of the cathedral, and guided not only to developing 

The fact that Gillig wrote the relationship between the six Diviners as that of supportive sisters right from the start, rather than resorting to the catty sort of friendship between women that are so prevalent, made me love reading about the bond that had developed between these six unrelated orphans forced to cohabitate for a decade. And I’m glad that she did that, because these girls weren’t exactly sitting on easy street. The way in which they have to receive the messages are not my idea of a good time (the Diviners agree). But when a new king visits Aisling to have his omens divined, and Sybil’s sisters start to disappear one by one, she is forced to team up with the last person she wants to ask for help—a knight named Rodrick. 

The knight, who goes by Rory, is rude, obnoxious, and disrespectful of the Omens. He and Sybil get along as well as … well, they don’t get along. Not even a little bit. If you read romantasy, you can probably predict that this is an enemies to lovers book, and it is the trope done to perfection. The interactions between Sybil and Rory really were a standout, and it was easy to understand why they don’t get along, But watching their banter start out as constantly antagonistic towards each other, before slowly switching to being humorously antagonistic, and then to smoking hot tension that builds from the first second these two meet, bubbling over in a series of increasingly steamy scenes along the way.

But in this story, there is such a wonderful cast of side characters that captured my heart. Starting with a bat-winged gargoyle who calls everyone Bartholemew and is assigned to take care of Sybil. After our first time discussing him, we resorted to calling him Bartholemew rather than having to say ‘the bat-winged gargoyle’ every time, and it felt like Gillig really explored the use of humor in her story, especially coming from ‘Bartholemew.’ He had some of the best lines in the story, but his fiercely loyal heart and quirky personality is what made him my favorite character. However, Maude was a close second as a knight in her forties, who despite her fierce battle skills, still has a soft heart with the vibe of an older sister sharing life tips. 

Despite the sweet found family vibes, don’t be mistaken: there are some heavier topics to be found. These girls are taken into the control of an abbess who regularly subjects them to abuse in order to obtain visions, and I couldn’t help but feel for these girls who have their lives decided for them when it’s barely started. There is a lot of ambiguity around the girls—they can’t remember anything about their lives before coming to be a Diviner, don’t know how they’ve developed the skill for Divining, where the disappeared sisters have gone, and how to get them back. Sybil is only able to recall what her name was, but has spent almost the entire decade being referred to as “Six.”

I really liked how Gillig focused on the development of Sybil’s character, both amongst and in the absence of her five sisters. There’s a thread of identity that runs through Sybil’s storyline, and I liked seeing how her own self-concept changes as she is exposed to and has to incorporate new information as it is presented to her, but she also explores the way in which we don’t always see things clearly, even if they’re right in front of our face.

Overall, this book is amazing and magical and hilarious and emotional and romantic, and the pace was fast, but it was okay because between the two of us, we couldn’t read the sections fast enough. I think this might have been the fastest that I’ve buddy read a book without DNFing! One of my favorite aspects of the book was seeing Sybil so bereft after her sisters disappear, and gradually developing even more found family as she journeys with the young, new king and the two knights that are in his inner circle. The way that the Omens are each associated with a magical object and readers are given the chance to get to know each Omen and what they symbolize was fascinating, and the way in which the deities relate to the girls who Divine for them. I had to really focus to find even a single thing that I didn’t like, and that was the fact that there is a major cliffhanger ending, and the author is only human and can’t get the next book in readers hands faster. Which I won’t hold against Gillig or the book, because it was so good I’m anticipating the next one before this is even published.

You might love this book as much as I do if you:

• Love reading romantasy.
• Enjoy a well-written enemies to lovers trope.
• Can’t stop thinking about tall, muscular, and/or broody knights.
• Have found family as one of your favorite tropes.
• Are unable to pass by a gothic romantasy without immediately needing to read it.

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