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The Stonewater Kingdom #1
The Knight and the Moth
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.
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.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published May 20, 2025
14406 people are currently reading
343216 people want to read
About the author
Rachel Gillig
5 books23.1k followersRachel Gillig was born and raised on the California coast. She is a writer, with a B.A. in Literary Theory and Criticism from UC Davis. If she is not ensconced in blankets dreaming up her next novel, Rachel is in her garden or walking with her husband, son, and their poodle, Wally.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 25,060 reviews
May 28, 2025
જ⁀➴ infinite stars✰
Phenomenal, incredible and astonishing. A masterpiece.
➳ plot:
For ten long years, Sybil Delling has known nothing but dreams and drowning. Taken in as a foundling, she was brought to Aisling Cathedral to become a Diviner. In return for a decade of service, she and six other girls were given shelter—stripped of their names and identified only by numbers—gaining the power to receive visions from six entities called the Omens. People from all across Traum travel the winding paths to the Cathedral on the tor, seeking glimpses of their futures. Sybil and the other Diviners guide them through the enchanted waters of Aisling’s spring, which pull them into dream-like trances.
As their ten-year term nears its end, the king of Traum and his knights unexpectedly arrive at the Cathedral. Soon after, one by one, the other Diviners vanish—until only Sybil remains. With no one left to turn to, she forms an uneasy alliance with Roderick Myndacious, a crude and abrasive knight she met during the king’s arrival. Thrust into an unfamiliar world alongside a reckless young king chasing a dream, Sybil is forced to uncover the true price of her divine abilities—and the hidden truths behind the visions, the Omens, and the gods themselves.
➳ my thoughts:
I genuinely don’t know how to capture the whirlwind of emotions I experienced while reading this book—but I’m going to try my best, even if words don’t feel like enough.
This was my very first book by Rachel, and let me tell you—it won’t be my last. I just bought her previous duology because she’s officially been added to my auto-buy author list. I finished this book 2 weeks ago, and I still can’t stop thinking about it. The characters, the plot, the writing—it all left such a lasting impression. It honestly felt like this book was written for me. It altered my brain chemistry in the best way possible 😭 It’s been such a long time since a book made me feel this way. I laughed, I cried, I was glued to the book. I was completely immersed. It was perfect. I even stayed up reading until 7 a.m. two nights in a row—during finals week. When I should’ve been studying, but it felt like Rachel cast an actual spell on me with this book. I couldn’t stop reading.
This was also my first gothic fantasy—and only the third fantasy book I’ve ever read—so I’m not claiming to be an expert on world-building. But from my perspective, the world in this book was enchanting, vivid, and masterfully crafted. The setting was steeped in divination, ancient lore, and myth, with a gripping series of quests that gave it a sense of momentum and purpose. I was captivated by how immersive it all felt. The atmosphere was rich and eerie, and the magic system had such depth without ever feeling confusing or overdone.
Everything about this story—the emotion, the writing, the world, the characters—worked together so seamlessly. It was a reading experience I won’t forget any time soon, and I already want to re-read it just to feel everything all over again.
There’s no better way to explain this book that how Rachel did on her acknowledgements: “It's about a woman who tries her best, an errant knight who falls in love with her, and a precious limestone gargoyle. It's about what we lose and what we gain, the arduous journey of self-discovery—the painful, beautiful burden of living.”
The writing in this book was absolutely incredible. I’ll admit—I was a little nervous going in, worried that I might not fully grasp everything, especially since I’m still new to the fantasy genre. But Rachel’s writing style was so smooth, so immersive, that I had no problem following along. (I was confused for the first 40 pages but then understood everything lol) In fact, it pulled me in so deeply that I didn’t even feel like I was reading—I felt like I was living it. Every scene played out in my mind like a movie. It was so detailed, so cinematic, that I found myself completely transported.
This is the kind of book you close... and immediately want to open again. I genuinely had the time of my life reading it. It’s not just a favorite—it’s my new obsession. My new personality, honestly.
And while this book isn’t necessarily sad, I still found myself crying at random moments—just because of how much I love these characters. I’m so emotionally attached to them it’s kind of ridiculous. I think about them constantly, like they’re real people living rent-free in my head.
If I had to point out one downside? It ends on a cliffhanger. I have no idea how I’m supposed to survive the wait for the next book 😭 I need it now.
➳ characters:
ೃ࿐ Sybil Delling {six}
I love, love, love her—Sybil is hands down one of my favorite female protagonists ever.
One of my favorite things about Sybil—maybe her greatest virtue—is her loyalty. No matter what, she never loses sight of the Diviners. Even when she’s navigating impossible choices and shifting truths, she always carries them in her heart. Her devotion is steady and unwavering, like a compass that keeps her grounded. She never forgets why she’s there or who she’s doing this for, and that level of loyalty in a character is something I find deeply moving.
What really struck me, though, was how we got to watch her grow. As the quest unfolds, Sybil begins to rediscover parts of herself—parts that had been buried or silenced. She starts to question what she’s been taught to believe, begins to dismantle the ideology that shaped her worldview, and little by little, she carves out her own path. Watching her break free from the grip of the abyss trenches was powerful. For ten years, she lived in submission, doing what she had to in order to survive, to feel seen, to feel loved. The abyss was the only source of validation she had—and so she gave it everything. She was trying so hard to be good, to be useful, to be enough for it.
But what moved me most was the moment she began to realize that she didn’t have to keep giving herself away. That she was allowed to want something more. That her worth wasn’t defined by what she could do for others. That shift—watching her reclaim her agency—was one of the most satisfying parts of the book.
ೃ࿐ Rodrick Mendacious {rory}
MY MAN!!!!! THE LOVE OF MY LIFE!!!!! I LOVE HIM!!!!
Rory completely owns my heart. From the moment he was introduced, I was absolutely charmed—and somehow, the more we got to know him, the deeper I fell. I mean, a mysterious, brooding knight with piercings and eyeliner? Say less. But what truly got me was how unexpectedly soft he is. Protective, gentle, respectful—and so hopelessly in love with Sybil it hurts.
The way he’s always looking out for her, quietly checking in, making sure she’s safe—it was such a delight to read. There’s no possessiveness or ego about it; it’s genuine care. He sees her for who she is—strong, capable, and resilient—and while he’s protective, he never underestimates her. He knows she can fight her own battles. His love isn’t about control; it’s about support. He respects her strength and honors it.
And the blushing?? Oh my GOD. Here’s this stoic, shadowy knight with a reputation for being dark and mysterious… and he can barely speak a full sentence around her without turning red.🤭 It’s literally the cutest thing. There’s something so tender in how vulnerable he becomes in her presence. She disarms him completely, and he doesn’t fight it—he leans into it. He lets himself feel, and you can tell he’s not used to doing that. That contrast between his intimidating presence and soft heart? Perfection.
⤷ HE IS OBSESSED
My favorite thing about Rory—without question—is how deeply he worships Sybil. Not in an idolizing or distant way, but in the most grounded, respectful sense. He sees her. All of her. And he lets her lead. Sybil wears a shroud over her eyes, as is expected of the Diviners. Rory, though clearly curious, never pushes. Even when he wants to see her eyes, he waits. He respects her timing, her choice. He doesn’t try to peel her open—he waits for her to reveal herself when she’s ready. That kind of patience and reverence? It absolutely destroyed me.
And then there’s that line—“I would do anything you ask me for.” He means it. With his whole heart. You’d expect a knight to pledge loyalty to a king—but Rory’s loyalty belongs to Sybil, and Sybil alone. It’s not just romantic; it’s spiritual. His devotion to her runs deeper than duty. It’s soul-deep.
Also the author said Tamino is a character reference and let me tell you that he gives the best Rory vibes in every possible way.
˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥˚✿ °. Sybil & Rory:
THEIR ROMANCE WAS EVERYTHING!!!
I was screaming my house down at every single interaction between Rory and Sybil. The banter is top tier, the way they constantly challenged each other while slowly, achingly falling in love? perfection. I’m not being dramatic when I say I am utterly obsessed with them.
What made their romance hit even harder was the fact that they started off as complete opposites—mistrusting each other, misjudging one another, carrying wildly different beliefs. Rory doesn’t believe in the Diviners. Sybil doesn’t believe in knights. They each carry centuries of bias, tradition, and pain. And yet… somewhere in the middle, they found each other. Slowly. Quietly. Intensely. They started to see the other person, really see them, beyond roles and titles and myths. They became each other’s safe space
The tension, the chemistry, the longing—it was all so rich, so palpable. The pining, the trust, the care, the yearning—I felt it in my bones. This wasn’t just a romance. It was something raw and real and achingly beautiful. They made me believe in love again.
And listen, if you’re picking this book up expecting instant gratification or page one spice—this isn’t that. The romance here is a slow burn. slow in the best way possible. But that’s what makes it so rewarding. The relationship grows alongside the plot. It matters to the story, and the story makes the romance even more powerful.
No, there’s not that much explicit smut. But you know what? The emotional tension between Rory and Sybil is better than half the chemistry I’ve read in books that are all romance and no plot. This book proves that longing, intimacy, and emotional depth can be just as—if not more—compelling than physical scenes. Their connection simmers beneath every look, every word, every moment they spend trying not to fall for each other.
Sybil and Rory aren’t just a couple—they’re a collision of two wounded souls trying to make sense of their world and finding unexpected warmth in each other. Their romance isn't rushed or convenient. It’s earned. And it’s everything.
ೃ࿐ Bartholomew
The star of the book, he deserves his own section in this review.
Never in my life did I think I’d get emotional—sentimental, even—over a fictional gargoyle. But here we are. And not only did this gargoyle completely steal the show, he stole my entire heart along with it.
He was hands down the funniest character in the book, with perfect comedic timing and the dramatic humor that had me laughing out loud more times than I can count. His snarky comebacks, his sarcastic little jabs, his offended gasps whenever someone dared to insult him? Hilarious. And yet, beneath the laughter, there was so much heart. This wasn’t just comic relief—this was a layered character with a tragic backstory and a fierce, loyal soul.
What touched me most was how devoted he was to Sybil. Always at her side. Always watching out for her. He made sure she wasn’t alone, even when everyone else was gone. It wasn’t just duty—it was love. And the blanket?? Don’t even get me started. The fact that this stone creature refused to sleep without his blanket??😂 He was a cutie pie, through and through.
➳ side characters:
I really liked all side characters, they were so different from each other but as a group they worked so well.
One of the most beautiful aspects of this book is how it handles found family. It starts with the six Diviners—sisters not by blood, but by bond. I adored their connection, the way they looked after one another during their years in the Tor, dreaming of freedom and reunion after their ten years were up. A circle of women surviving something no one else could understand. And then when the journey starts we can see how much Maude, Rory and the king care for the other.
SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING‼️‼️
Seriously, if you haven’t read the book don’t read this paragraph cause I’m going to talk about the ending. Anyways, i think finding who the villain was to be easy, because of how the king started to act different once Rory and Sybil started to date. I did not wanted to believe it, I was in denial hahahha. But my thing with the king being the villain is that I can’t imagine how Maude and Rory feel. They gave their life for that boy and he betrayed them like that. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book. also the gargoyle crying when he realized that he had to leave without Sybil😭😭 I broke down at that scene. I need the second book right now.
END OF SPOILERS
overall: go read this the moment it comes out!!! I’m forever thankful for the woman who shoved this book at me at the Barnes and nobles festival!!! I don’t think I’ll have grab it if it were for me😚
♬⋆.˚ playlistᰔ
⤷ runaway⟡ aurora
⤷ die for you ⟡ starset
⤷ which witch ⟡ florence + the machine
⤷ war of hearts ⟡ ruelle
⤷ love and war ⟡ fleurie
⤷ biblical ⟡ calum scott
⋆𐙚₊˚⊹"You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don't know what to call it, but I want it. I want you."⋆𐙚₊˚⊹
Phenomenal, incredible and astonishing. A masterpiece.
➳ plot:
For ten long years, Sybil Delling has known nothing but dreams and drowning. Taken in as a foundling, she was brought to Aisling Cathedral to become a Diviner. In return for a decade of service, she and six other girls were given shelter—stripped of their names and identified only by numbers—gaining the power to receive visions from six entities called the Omens. People from all across Traum travel the winding paths to the Cathedral on the tor, seeking glimpses of their futures. Sybil and the other Diviners guide them through the enchanted waters of Aisling’s spring, which pull them into dream-like trances.
As their ten-year term nears its end, the king of Traum and his knights unexpectedly arrive at the Cathedral. Soon after, one by one, the other Diviners vanish—until only Sybil remains. With no one left to turn to, she forms an uneasy alliance with Roderick Myndacious, a crude and abrasive knight she met during the king’s arrival. Thrust into an unfamiliar world alongside a reckless young king chasing a dream, Sybil is forced to uncover the true price of her divine abilities—and the hidden truths behind the visions, the Omens, and the gods themselves.
➳ my thoughts:
I genuinely don’t know how to capture the whirlwind of emotions I experienced while reading this book—but I’m going to try my best, even if words don’t feel like enough.
This was my very first book by Rachel, and let me tell you—it won’t be my last. I just bought her previous duology because she’s officially been added to my auto-buy author list. I finished this book 2 weeks ago, and I still can’t stop thinking about it. The characters, the plot, the writing—it all left such a lasting impression. It honestly felt like this book was written for me. It altered my brain chemistry in the best way possible 😭 It’s been such a long time since a book made me feel this way. I laughed, I cried, I was glued to the book. I was completely immersed. It was perfect. I even stayed up reading until 7 a.m. two nights in a row—during finals week. When I should’ve been studying, but it felt like Rachel cast an actual spell on me with this book. I couldn’t stop reading.
This was also my first gothic fantasy—and only the third fantasy book I’ve ever read—so I’m not claiming to be an expert on world-building. But from my perspective, the world in this book was enchanting, vivid, and masterfully crafted. The setting was steeped in divination, ancient lore, and myth, with a gripping series of quests that gave it a sense of momentum and purpose. I was captivated by how immersive it all felt. The atmosphere was rich and eerie, and the magic system had such depth without ever feeling confusing or overdone.
"Histories are forged by those who benefit from them, and seldom those who live them."
Everything about this story—the emotion, the writing, the world, the characters—worked together so seamlessly. It was a reading experience I won’t forget any time soon, and I already want to re-read it just to feel everything all over again.
There’s no better way to explain this book that how Rachel did on her acknowledgements: “It's about a woman who tries her best, an errant knight who falls in love with her, and a precious limestone gargoyle. It's about what we lose and what we gain, the arduous journey of self-discovery—the painful, beautiful burden of living.”
The writing in this book was absolutely incredible. I’ll admit—I was a little nervous going in, worried that I might not fully grasp everything, especially since I’m still new to the fantasy genre. But Rachel’s writing style was so smooth, so immersive, that I had no problem following along. (I was confused for the first 40 pages but then understood everything lol) In fact, it pulled me in so deeply that I didn’t even feel like I was reading—I felt like I was living it. Every scene played out in my mind like a movie. It was so detailed, so cinematic, that I found myself completely transported.
This is the kind of book you close... and immediately want to open again. I genuinely had the time of my life reading it. It’s not just a favorite—it’s my new obsession. My new personality, honestly.
And while this book isn’t necessarily sad, I still found myself crying at random moments—just because of how much I love these characters. I’m so emotionally attached to them it’s kind of ridiculous. I think about them constantly, like they’re real people living rent-free in my head.
If I had to point out one downside? It ends on a cliffhanger. I have no idea how I’m supposed to survive the wait for the next book 😭 I need it now.
➳ characters:
ೃ࿐ Sybil Delling {six}
I love, love, love her—Sybil is hands down one of my favorite female protagonists ever.
One of my favorite things about Sybil—maybe her greatest virtue—is her loyalty. No matter what, she never loses sight of the Diviners. Even when she’s navigating impossible choices and shifting truths, she always carries them in her heart. Her devotion is steady and unwavering, like a compass that keeps her grounded. She never forgets why she’s there or who she’s doing this for, and that level of loyalty in a character is something I find deeply moving.
What really struck me, though, was how we got to watch her grow. As the quest unfolds, Sybil begins to rediscover parts of herself—parts that had been buried or silenced. She starts to question what she’s been taught to believe, begins to dismantle the ideology that shaped her worldview, and little by little, she carves out her own path. Watching her break free from the grip of the abyss trenches was powerful. For ten years, she lived in submission, doing what she had to in order to survive, to feel seen, to feel loved. The abyss was the only source of validation she had—and so she gave it everything. She was trying so hard to be good, to be useful, to be enough for it.
But what moved me most was the moment she began to realize that she didn’t have to keep giving herself away. That she was allowed to want something more. That her worth wasn’t defined by what she could do for others. That shift—watching her reclaim her agency—was one of the most satisfying parts of the book.
ೃ࿐ Rodrick Mendacious {rory}
MY MAN!!!!! THE LOVE OF MY LIFE!!!!! I LOVE HIM!!!!
Rory completely owns my heart. From the moment he was introduced, I was absolutely charmed—and somehow, the more we got to know him, the deeper I fell. I mean, a mysterious, brooding knight with piercings and eyeliner? Say less. But what truly got me was how unexpectedly soft he is. Protective, gentle, respectful—and so hopelessly in love with Sybil it hurts.
The way he’s always looking out for her, quietly checking in, making sure she’s safe—it was such a delight to read. There’s no possessiveness or ego about it; it’s genuine care. He sees her for who she is—strong, capable, and resilient—and while he’s protective, he never underestimates her. He knows she can fight her own battles. His love isn’t about control; it’s about support. He respects her strength and honors it.
And the blushing?? Oh my GOD. Here’s this stoic, shadowy knight with a reputation for being dark and mysterious… and he can barely speak a full sentence around her without turning red.🤭 It’s literally the cutest thing. There’s something so tender in how vulnerable he becomes in her presence. She disarms him completely, and he doesn’t fight it—he leans into it. He lets himself feel, and you can tell he’s not used to doing that. That contrast between his intimidating presence and soft heart? Perfection.
⋆˚⊹"You are more special than you realize. I don’t even know your name and I would do anything for you”⋆˚⊹
⤷ HE IS OBSESSED
My favorite thing about Rory—without question—is how deeply he worships Sybil. Not in an idolizing or distant way, but in the most grounded, respectful sense. He sees her. All of her. And he lets her lead. Sybil wears a shroud over her eyes, as is expected of the Diviners. Rory, though clearly curious, never pushes. Even when he wants to see her eyes, he waits. He respects her timing, her choice. He doesn’t try to peel her open—he waits for her to reveal herself when she’s ready. That kind of patience and reverence? It absolutely destroyed me.
And then there’s that line—“I would do anything you ask me for.” He means it. With his whole heart. You’d expect a knight to pledge loyalty to a king—but Rory’s loyalty belongs to Sybil, and Sybil alone. It’s not just romantic; it’s spiritual. His devotion to her runs deeper than duty. It’s soul-deep.
Also the author said Tamino is a character reference and let me tell you that he gives the best Rory vibes in every possible way.
˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥˚✿ °. Sybil & Rory:
THEIR ROMANCE WAS EVERYTHING!!!
I was screaming my house down at every single interaction between Rory and Sybil. The banter is top tier, the way they constantly challenged each other while slowly, achingly falling in love? perfection. I’m not being dramatic when I say I am utterly obsessed with them.
What made their romance hit even harder was the fact that they started off as complete opposites—mistrusting each other, misjudging one another, carrying wildly different beliefs. Rory doesn’t believe in the Diviners. Sybil doesn’t believe in knights. They each carry centuries of bias, tradition, and pain. And yet… somewhere in the middle, they found each other. Slowly. Quietly. Intensely. They started to see the other person, really see them, beyond roles and titles and myths. They became each other’s safe space
The tension, the chemistry, the longing—it was all so rich, so palpable. The pining, the trust, the care, the yearning—I felt it in my bones. This wasn’t just a romance. It was something raw and real and achingly beautiful. They made me believe in love again.
And listen, if you’re picking this book up expecting instant gratification or page one spice—this isn’t that. The romance here is a slow burn. slow in the best way possible. But that’s what makes it so rewarding. The relationship grows alongside the plot. It matters to the story, and the story makes the romance even more powerful.
No, there’s not that much explicit smut. But you know what? The emotional tension between Rory and Sybil is better than half the chemistry I’ve read in books that are all romance and no plot. This book proves that longing, intimacy, and emotional depth can be just as—if not more—compelling than physical scenes. Their connection simmers beneath every look, every word, every moment they spend trying not to fall for each other.
Sybil and Rory aren’t just a couple—they’re a collision of two wounded souls trying to make sense of their world and finding unexpected warmth in each other. Their romance isn't rushed or convenient. It’s earned. And it’s everything.
ೃ࿐ Bartholomew
The star of the book, he deserves his own section in this review.
Never in my life did I think I’d get emotional—sentimental, even—over a fictional gargoyle. But here we are. And not only did this gargoyle completely steal the show, he stole my entire heart along with it.
He was hands down the funniest character in the book, with perfect comedic timing and the dramatic humor that had me laughing out loud more times than I can count. His snarky comebacks, his sarcastic little jabs, his offended gasps whenever someone dared to insult him? Hilarious. And yet, beneath the laughter, there was so much heart. This wasn’t just comic relief—this was a layered character with a tragic backstory and a fierce, loyal soul.
What touched me most was how devoted he was to Sybil. Always at her side. Always watching out for her. He made sure she wasn’t alone, even when everyone else was gone. It wasn’t just duty—it was love. And the blanket?? Don’t even get me started. The fact that this stone creature refused to sleep without his blanket??😂 He was a cutie pie, through and through.
⋆˚⊹"I will carry them for you, Bartholomew. I will shoulder any weight you give me.”⋆˚⊹
➳ side characters:
I really liked all side characters, they were so different from each other but as a group they worked so well.
One of the most beautiful aspects of this book is how it handles found family. It starts with the six Diviners—sisters not by blood, but by bond. I adored their connection, the way they looked after one another during their years in the Tor, dreaming of freedom and reunion after their ten years were up. A circle of women surviving something no one else could understand. And then when the journey starts we can see how much Maude, Rory and the king care for the other.
SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING‼️‼️
Seriously, if you haven’t read the book don’t read this paragraph cause I’m going to talk about the ending. Anyways, i think finding who the villain was to be easy, because of how the king started to act different once Rory and Sybil started to date. I did not wanted to believe it, I was in denial hahahha. But my thing with the king being the villain is that I can’t imagine how Maude and Rory feel. They gave their life for that boy and he betrayed them like that. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book. also the gargoyle crying when he realized that he had to leave without Sybil😭😭 I broke down at that scene. I need the second book right now.
END OF SPOILERS
overall: go read this the moment it comes out!!! I’m forever thankful for the woman who shoved this book at me at the Barnes and nobles festival!!! I don’t think I’ll have grab it if it were for me😚
♬⋆.˚ playlistᰔ
⤷ runaway⟡ aurora
⤷ die for you ⟡ starset
⤷ which witch ⟡ florence + the machine
⤷ war of hearts ⟡ ruelle
⤷ love and war ⟡ fleurie
⤷ biblical ⟡ calum scott
May 28, 2025
Second most anticipated book of the year. Second worst disappointment of the year.
Spoilers are going to be necessary to elaborate on the why, so be warned. Looking back after a couple of days letting the hard feelings settle, I would say that the issues in this book can be rounded up in three groups: the worldbuilding, the characters, and the storytelling. When a book becomes messy, it's because it's lacking in these three aspects, the pillars of a good story.
Let's start with the worldbuilding. It's incoherent. I have no idea where the praise for the worldbuilding I heard from the promotional reviews was coming from, and seeing how common this compliment has become, I'm starting to suspect "great worldbuilding" is the new "lush prose"/"bravura storytelling": the formulaic, cringey kudos popularised by professional reviewers years ago. It also makes me think all it takes to get a "great worldbuilding" is to write a character traipsing outside the four walls of a castle and showing cute landscapes in a tiny area no matter how illogical it looks.
I don't believe having a large, expansive universe is a requisite for good worldbuilding, you can do excellent worldbuilding within the walls of a castle. It's all in the coherence of the culture, the depth of its societal context, and the consistency of its geopolitical characteristics. It has to feel lived-in, and believable; fantasy is no excuse for a sloppy world.
This world is sloppy, geographically it's a tiny kingdom that only has five hamlets. The size isn't the problem, there are and always have been very small kingdoms in Europe, so for the Stonewater Kingdom to be the size of Liechstenstein is fine. But . . .
a. Each village has one single profession only, none of which can sustain an economy as there's no economic diversification. Who makes the food and the daily stuff or imports of goods they don't produce that are necessary for life? No idea.
b. Each village is radically different to the others in terms of geography. In a kingdom this size, it not geologically possible. Even fantasy has to stick to the laws of logic, you can't have Liechstenstein with the geographical diversity of America (the author is Californian, it shows).
c. A big number of characters, especially those of the nobility, have German names and surnames: Bauer, Eichel, Hamelin . . . But then, nobody in this kingdom speaks anything remotely German, and Anglo names are dropped: Maude, Sybil, Bennett, Rodrick... Again, it's like the author is going for the ethnicity of a tiny German principality with the linguistic (and presumably racial, but not sure since everyone here is white) of America.
d. The name of the kingdom is Traum. "Dream" in German. And it is a theocratic overlordship by a religion that uses prophetic dreaming to control the masses. Subtle as a dancing hippo. Why not call it Madabbessisthebaddieburg, it would be subtler. Yes, I realise the target audience is English-speaking and won't see the inconsistencies in German.
e. The theocratic rule of this kingdom is based on Catholicism. Fine, it's not original to base the Big Bad Government on the Catholic Church, it's a cheap shot for the lazy and done for centuries, but if you're going to do it at least do make an effort to keep it consistent and actually inform yourself on how it works. In this world, Aisling's Cathedral (the religion doesn't have a name, it derives its identity from one single cathedral) doesn't have a structure: no clergy, no rituals, no churches, no theology, no moral rulebook. Nothing but this: a big cathedral built by a magically-enhanced human, a troupe of six nun-like prats dedicated to divination (the best of which has the very subtle name of Sybil, like in the Roman prophetess known as the Sybil of Cumae), a troupe of mortal gods that are enhanced by drinking stinky magical water, and gargoyle guardians. In short, the entire religion is one woman and her coterie.
Again, the author merely borrowed the "imagery" of Catholicism for her Big Bad, and nothing else. And for more inconsistency, these Diviner girls are like Catholic nuns and Roman Vestals, all of which were required to be secluded and celibate. But these girls don't take a vow of celibacy and carouse with whoever comes to their cathedral, and escape for a day out just weeks before their service is up. Because they can.
I don't expect it to have some complex theology and liturgical structure like the Catholic Church, and even less so I want some detailed rundown of how the secular law & order works here. I'm not George R. R. Martin asking to see Aragorn's creation of an IRS to extort gold from the Hobbits, no. But I expect you to convince me this one-woman religion and five-bumfucksville kingdom to show they really are centuries old without making it so hilariously and painfully implausible.
And I expect you to not make fun of me as a reader by giving the main male character an emo edgelord name such as Myndacious. Rodrick Liar, that's basically what you called him.
The characters could've been the saving grace for this story, if not for how insufferable they are. The hero and heroine are like a ruder and crueller version of Ravyn (yeah, I can tell the author's penchant for cringey names is a feature, not a glitch) and Elspeth, without any of their charm. They follow the predictable paint-by-numbers enemies to lovers formula, complete with convenient naked sightings, kiss another man to make him jealous, unfunny exchanges of barbs, mutual insults, and an entire chapter of clownishly described sex. Whatever chemistry they have, it comes from both being crass and rude to each other, and this constant exchange of epithets and "fuck" like they're common-usage verbs is distracting and a mood killer. Some of the scenes read like very forced attempts at creating sexual tension that results in them being overdone, such as the armour scene in which Eyeliner Emo pours molten beeswax over a dress of Hulk Nun's and over her as well as an excuse to get waxen measurement moulds for making armour for her (which is then never shown during the process), when the reality is that the scene is forced so the hero can run his hands over the heroine, armour-making accuracy be damned.
Sure, you could say the gargoyle is the best character. Compared to Rodrick and Sybil, yes, but everyone else from the secondary characters is better written than these two, even Benji. And in any case I think the best character overall is Maude, she's consistent throughout. The gargoyle was the typical funny sidekick that becomes the soul of the party, but even he was misused as a tape recording device to info-dump all the backstory in one go.
The abysmal pace of storytelling here makes me wonder how many rounds of editing this book went through. It starts so slow and excruciatingly annoying because these characters at the cathedral act, talk, and behave like students from an American college having a weed party in the dorms. They even have "idleweed," which is marijuana. They have one-night stands with pilgrims and escapades to their heart's content, they don't think for one minute of the seriousness of their responsibilities. They're immature frat girls, not nuns or vestals. And the Knights that come to the cathedral and disrupt their world are a mix of frat boys and US Marines approaching balding age that go pick up easy college chits. Somehow, they're celibate and the diviners aren't, but they all act as if neither of them are bound to keep it in their pants.
And when you're about to drop the book out of sheer boredom, near the middle it turns out there's more to the one-woman religion, and you get to know the likely truth about the Omens, the creation of the five villages, and a secular crusade led by the king to put an end to the cathedral's dictatorial grasp on the kingdom. "Yay," you think, "finally this will make sense!" And, optimistic as you are, you think this is at least salvageable as a mediocre-but-readable commentary on Theocracy vs Secularism, Romantasy version. At least you could take it as a whack job of a metaphor for Religion = Bad, that would also do something useful with that matriarchal cult. After all, America is the birthplace of the weirdest Christian offshoots and maybe it was the author's very Californian way of doing meta-critique on that?
Sweet optimistic Marquise, you're giving it too much credit. It soon evolves into a Xena, Warrior Princess type of plot, Hulk-nun version. Every kill Sybil does is easy, because Magical Eau de Rot gives her super-strength, and ultimately there's a plot twist with no buildup at all that tables the turns, ruining even the Religion = Bad commentary, and you end up replacing Nun Theocratic Fascism with Hulk-Nun/King Secular Fascism. I can't help but snort at what I've just described that finale as, it's the most out of the blue twist, and you can see it's going to drag and bloat a story that could've been done with in this one single job, if editing and streamlining had been better.
There's simply no gargoyle good enough to compensate for all that.
I can see others with my same or similar issues will await the second book to get explanations, and likely the second book will try to fix these issues. There's some hanging threads and questions yet to be answered (how is that water magical if there are no gods in this world? What gives it its magic?), but there's simply no interest on my part to get the answers. What I'm left with, what matters to me, is how poorly handled this was, and it makes me sad as someone who loved her first books. I want to believe this was either a rush job or the publi$her$ reading the plotline filtered through a $100 note, because I struggle to see how this is the same Rachel Gillig of the Shepherd King duology. At the end, she mentions she wrote this whilst suffering from brain fog from long Covid-19, and you can see how that's impacted this book. It's not meant to be inconsiderate to her suffering, I caught the sickness as well and it was horrible for me. But precisely because she wrote this in these circumstances is that the book should have undergone more rounds of editing, proofreading, and hard streamlining of certain parts.
Spoilers are going to be necessary to elaborate on the why, so be warned. Looking back after a couple of days letting the hard feelings settle, I would say that the issues in this book can be rounded up in three groups: the worldbuilding, the characters, and the storytelling. When a book becomes messy, it's because it's lacking in these three aspects, the pillars of a good story.
Let's start with the worldbuilding. It's incoherent. I have no idea where the praise for the worldbuilding I heard from the promotional reviews was coming from, and seeing how common this compliment has become, I'm starting to suspect "great worldbuilding" is the new "lush prose"/"bravura storytelling": the formulaic, cringey kudos popularised by professional reviewers years ago. It also makes me think all it takes to get a "great worldbuilding" is to write a character traipsing outside the four walls of a castle and showing cute landscapes in a tiny area no matter how illogical it looks.
I don't believe having a large, expansive universe is a requisite for good worldbuilding, you can do excellent worldbuilding within the walls of a castle. It's all in the coherence of the culture, the depth of its societal context, and the consistency of its geopolitical characteristics. It has to feel lived-in, and believable; fantasy is no excuse for a sloppy world.
This world is sloppy, geographically it's a tiny kingdom that only has five hamlets. The size isn't the problem, there are and always have been very small kingdoms in Europe, so for the Stonewater Kingdom to be the size of Liechstenstein is fine. But . . .
a. Each village has one single profession only, none of which can sustain an economy as there's no economic diversification. Who makes the food and the daily stuff or imports of goods they don't produce that are necessary for life? No idea.
b. Each village is radically different to the others in terms of geography. In a kingdom this size, it not geologically possible. Even fantasy has to stick to the laws of logic, you can't have Liechstenstein with the geographical diversity of America (the author is Californian, it shows).
c. A big number of characters, especially those of the nobility, have German names and surnames: Bauer, Eichel, Hamelin . . . But then, nobody in this kingdom speaks anything remotely German, and Anglo names are dropped: Maude, Sybil, Bennett, Rodrick... Again, it's like the author is going for the ethnicity of a tiny German principality with the linguistic (and presumably racial, but not sure since everyone here is white) of America.
d. The name of the kingdom is Traum. "Dream" in German. And it is a theocratic overlordship by a religion that uses prophetic dreaming to control the masses. Subtle as a dancing hippo. Why not call it Madabbessisthebaddieburg, it would be subtler. Yes, I realise the target audience is English-speaking and won't see the inconsistencies in German.
e. The theocratic rule of this kingdom is based on Catholicism. Fine, it's not original to base the Big Bad Government on the Catholic Church, it's a cheap shot for the lazy and done for centuries, but if you're going to do it at least do make an effort to keep it consistent and actually inform yourself on how it works. In this world, Aisling's Cathedral (the religion doesn't have a name, it derives its identity from one single cathedral) doesn't have a structure: no clergy, no rituals, no churches, no theology, no moral rulebook. Nothing but this: a big cathedral built by a magically-enhanced human, a troupe of six nun-like prats dedicated to divination (the best of which has the very subtle name of Sybil, like in the Roman prophetess known as the Sybil of Cumae), a troupe of mortal gods that are enhanced by drinking stinky magical water, and gargoyle guardians. In short, the entire religion is one woman and her coterie.
Again, the author merely borrowed the "imagery" of Catholicism for her Big Bad, and nothing else. And for more inconsistency, these Diviner girls are like Catholic nuns and Roman Vestals, all of which were required to be secluded and celibate. But these girls don't take a vow of celibacy and carouse with whoever comes to their cathedral, and escape for a day out just weeks before their service is up. Because they can.
I don't expect it to have some complex theology and liturgical structure like the Catholic Church, and even less so I want some detailed rundown of how the secular law & order works here. I'm not George R. R. Martin asking to see Aragorn's creation of an IRS to extort gold from the Hobbits, no. But I expect you to convince me this one-woman religion and five-bumfucksville kingdom to show they really are centuries old without making it so hilariously and painfully implausible.
And I expect you to not make fun of me as a reader by giving the main male character an emo edgelord name such as Myndacious. Rodrick Liar, that's basically what you called him.
The characters could've been the saving grace for this story, if not for how insufferable they are. The hero and heroine are like a ruder and crueller version of Ravyn (yeah, I can tell the author's penchant for cringey names is a feature, not a glitch) and Elspeth, without any of their charm. They follow the predictable paint-by-numbers enemies to lovers formula, complete with convenient naked sightings, kiss another man to make him jealous, unfunny exchanges of barbs, mutual insults, and an entire chapter of clownishly described sex. Whatever chemistry they have, it comes from both being crass and rude to each other, and this constant exchange of epithets and "fuck" like they're common-usage verbs is distracting and a mood killer. Some of the scenes read like very forced attempts at creating sexual tension that results in them being overdone, such as the armour scene in which Eyeliner Emo pours molten beeswax over a dress of Hulk Nun's and over her as well as an excuse to get waxen measurement moulds for making armour for her (which is then never shown during the process), when the reality is that the scene is forced so the hero can run his hands over the heroine, armour-making accuracy be damned.
Sure, you could say the gargoyle is the best character. Compared to Rodrick and Sybil, yes, but everyone else from the secondary characters is better written than these two, even Benji. And in any case I think the best character overall is Maude, she's consistent throughout. The gargoyle was the typical funny sidekick that becomes the soul of the party, but even he was misused as a tape recording device to info-dump all the backstory in one go.
The abysmal pace of storytelling here makes me wonder how many rounds of editing this book went through. It starts so slow and excruciatingly annoying because these characters at the cathedral act, talk, and behave like students from an American college having a weed party in the dorms. They even have "idleweed," which is marijuana. They have one-night stands with pilgrims and escapades to their heart's content, they don't think for one minute of the seriousness of their responsibilities. They're immature frat girls, not nuns or vestals. And the Knights that come to the cathedral and disrupt their world are a mix of frat boys and US Marines approaching balding age that go pick up easy college chits. Somehow, they're celibate and the diviners aren't, but they all act as if neither of them are bound to keep it in their pants.
And when you're about to drop the book out of sheer boredom, near the middle it turns out there's more to the one-woman religion, and you get to know the likely truth about the Omens, the creation of the five villages, and a secular crusade led by the king to put an end to the cathedral's dictatorial grasp on the kingdom. "Yay," you think, "finally this will make sense!" And, optimistic as you are, you think this is at least salvageable as a mediocre-but-readable commentary on Theocracy vs Secularism, Romantasy version. At least you could take it as a whack job of a metaphor for Religion = Bad, that would also do something useful with that matriarchal cult. After all, America is the birthplace of the weirdest Christian offshoots and maybe it was the author's very Californian way of doing meta-critique on that?
Sweet optimistic Marquise, you're giving it too much credit. It soon evolves into a Xena, Warrior Princess type of plot, Hulk-nun version. Every kill Sybil does is easy, because Magical Eau de Rot gives her super-strength, and ultimately there's a plot twist with no buildup at all that tables the turns, ruining even the Religion = Bad commentary, and you end up replacing Nun Theocratic Fascism with Hulk-Nun/King Secular Fascism. I can't help but snort at what I've just described that finale as, it's the most out of the blue twist, and you can see it's going to drag and bloat a story that could've been done with in this one single job, if editing and streamlining had been better.
There's simply no gargoyle good enough to compensate for all that.
I can see others with my same or similar issues will await the second book to get explanations, and likely the second book will try to fix these issues. There's some hanging threads and questions yet to be answered (how is that water magical if there are no gods in this world? What gives it its magic?), but there's simply no interest on my part to get the answers. What I'm left with, what matters to me, is how poorly handled this was, and it makes me sad as someone who loved her first books. I want to believe this was either a rush job or the publi$her$ reading the plotline filtered through a $100 note, because I struggle to see how this is the same Rachel Gillig of the Shepherd King duology. At the end, she mentions she wrote this whilst suffering from brain fog from long Covid-19, and you can see how that's impacted this book. It's not meant to be inconsiderate to her suffering, I caught the sickness as well and it was horrible for me. But precisely because she wrote this in these circumstances is that the book should have undergone more rounds of editing, proofreading, and hard streamlining of certain parts.
August 13, 2025
MOTHER IS FINALLY FEEDING US!!! *UPDATED FOR REVIEW*
⁀➴༯ 𝟒.𝟓/𝟓 ★ ★ ★ ★ ⭑
ᖭ༏ᖫ- ❝𝗧𝗼 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗰, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘁𝗲. 𝗪𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘄. 𝗪𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗻. 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝗳 𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗱𝗻’𝘁…𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹. 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗜 𝗮𝗺 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲. 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲—𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘂𝘀.❞ 𓂃 ࣪˖ ཐིཋྀ
ＳＰＯＩＬＥＲＳ ＡＨＥＡＤ
₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹ ₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹ ₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹ ₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹
ᖭ༏ᖫ- Oh my precious Bartholomew’s, why did no one warn me that this book would make me…CRY! AND LAUGH, AND MAD, AND CRY AGAIN???? I DID NOT CONSENT FOR THIS TYPE OF RIDE! I am absolutely SICKKK at how good this was. But was I actually surprised it was so good? WAS ANYONE REALLY SURPRISED?? I mean it’s Rachel Gillig. The only work she has out is one of the best fantasy reads i’ve ever read and yes I will die on that hill. Obviously i’m going to get into my points about the story, doing a breakdown, and my rating but I did want to make an important note on Rachel sharing how this books journey went. She shares in her acknowledgment that she’d became very brain fogged and tired after having COVID and she struggled hard to write. This fell somewhere in between her success for her Shepherd King duology. But she prevailed and we got this beautiful and amazing story that is obviously the start to a new story and I just want to say thank you to her for giving us this and pushing forward despite her creative and health obstacles.
٠ ࣪⭑- ❝ɪ ᴅɪᴅɴ’ᴛ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ɪᴛ ɴᴏᴡ. ɪ ᴋɴᴇᴡ ᴇxᴀᴄᴛʟʏ ʜᴏᴡ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱɪɢɴꜱ—ᴋɴᴇᴡ ᴇxᴀᴄᴛʟʏ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ɢᴏɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ʜᴀᴘᴘᴇɴ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ. ɪᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ʜᴀᴘᴘᴇɴɪɴɢ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ɴᴏᴡ. ɪ ᴡᴀꜱ ꜰᴀʟʟɪɴɢ ɪɴ ʟᴏᴠᴇ.❞ ༝༚༝༚
ᖭ༏ᖫ- I think I knew from the start that I would love this friend group. Benji, though carrying a lot of weight in his royal shoes was like the little brother, then there’s Rory the not so knightly knight, the serious and Maternal knight Maude, and their companions Six and the gargoyle. They’re all so vastly different and represent such different struggles of their own, even if they all do unfortunately have to answer to their shared nickname of Bartholomew. This story isn’t just funny, and the romance playful yet yearning, kind, and sweet, but it also shows how different we all view the world. When you really sit back and think, it’s a heavy hitter. I think this book displays character development both good and bad in such an impressive way because it’s not unrealistic. And even if it is fiction, realism is such an important part of storytelling sometimes (especially if that’s what the authors purpose was going for which it was).
ᖭ༏ᖫ- This 100% without a doubt, shoot me in the head if i’m wrong, that everyone’s favorite character is the gargoyle. IM SORRY I DONT MAKE THE RULES. I loved his fun, curious, and child like nature (come to find out he actually is a child which only made my heart ache more each time he cried but we can talk about that later). What’s so funny about his friendship with Six is that even though it may have appeared one sided in the beginning, it was SO obvious that Six felt the need to protect him even if he was technically HER protector. She never wanted anyone to yell at him and she always went to bat for him regardless of the crazy things he said or how he always got metaphors wrong. Rory and gargoyle brought exactly the comedic relief that Rachel Gillig manages to slide into her books and that fundamental element always tends to make a book easier to read even if it’s a case where it’s not the best story. Gargoyle may have cried, shrieked, screamed, had attitudes, and somehow always managed to miss the purpose of most things but he’s actually a lot wiser than his surface level image projects him as. Even if he is a child at heart, he’s wise for his time being alive (or dead technically I guess?). He’s always known who he was deep inside and he always knew who Six was meant to be outside of Aisling and being a Diviner. Though his idea of life outside the Cathedral was a bit scattered, he knew the idea well enough and that was a big part in discovering the hidden truths behind the Omens and Gods being nothing but a sham because it always comes back around to money and power doesn’t it?
٠
ᖭ༏ᖫ- I think Rory and Six are Grumpy X Sunshine except Rory would be sunshine and Six would be grumpy LMFAO. And honestly having it flipped makes it funnier and more likable. Even with Rory’s sour outlook on the world due to his upbringing, honestly he’s super fun. He also reminds of those childish kids who say “𝘐’𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦, 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴.” (⸝⸝ᵕᴗᵕ⸝⸝). Of course he takes his jabs at Six and always pesters her and makes fun of what she wears but the man is a flirt okay? He could never resist slipping a naughty joke in from time to time and he was so desperate to see and understand Six at her core. And I don’t even mean desperate to see her eyes under her gossamer like everyone else. He truly believed she should be free to live her life far before Six realized it herself and I adore selfless people. Everyone always wanted something from Six but Rory only wanted her to be free and live in truth rather than in a rose colored looking glass and i’m so glad Six loved him for it. Six arguably lost everything from her life, to the only girls (the other diviners) she trusted, to her mother figure, and the only things she knew and believed in, but Rory was right there to catch her when the truth made her fall.
ᖭ༏ᖫ- On the outside it seemed that Rory, Maude, and Benji’s friendship was tight knit and almost family-like but every surface tends to have its cracks. My theory is that from the moment Benji learned the five Omens did not favor him (though this isn’t technically true since the Gods are not real Gods and never really existed), he connected this to his grandfathers mistakes as king and how he openly doubted the Omens and was put to death and he doesn’t want the same fate. Though Benji too, does not share the same belief in the Gods how Traum does, just like his grandfather did, obviously it’s hard to break centuries old beliefs without getting stoned to death for it. Benji is very young, just a kid who is now king and he’s now in a desperate attempt to not only tamp down the bad mark his grandfather made on the kingdom, but to prove himself worthy of his title, and build confidence in his decisions without his knighthood or alcohol to coach him. Like any ruler, he seeks it the only way he knows how through power and money. Benji’s change of heart is either a direct link to his mistreatment from his people and him feeling undercut by his close friends, or my other assumption is somehow, someway he was turned into another Omen and his cloudless eyes that come and go seems to be an indicator of that. In the end he managed to turn friends to foes and fancies himself a queen diviner to match his status.
ᖭ༏ᖫ- My heart broke at the end of this book but thank Bartholomew there’s more to come! I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but I didn’t quite enjoy this one as much as my last Fantasy read (Shield of Sparrows amazing book and check out my review!) but I still enjoyed it just as much as I expected to and why I gave it such a high rating. I’m glad Rachel Gillig still hasn’t disappointed me. I know this review is long but if you read till the end then imagine me sending you a virtual kiss. <3
❝𝐅𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐥𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧.❞ 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔
⁀➴༯ 𝟒.𝟓/𝟓 ★ ★ ★ ★ ⭑
ᖭ༏ᖫ- ❝𝗧𝗼 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗰, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘁𝗲. 𝗪𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘄. 𝗪𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗻. 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝗳 𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗱𝗻’𝘁…𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹. 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗜 𝗮𝗺 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲. 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲—𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘂𝘀.❞ 𓂃 ࣪˖ ཐིཋྀ
ＳＰＯＩＬＥＲＳ ＡＨＥＡＤ
₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹ ₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹ ₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹ ₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹
ᖭ༏ᖫ- Oh my precious Bartholomew’s, why did no one warn me that this book would make me…CRY! AND LAUGH, AND MAD, AND CRY AGAIN???? I DID NOT CONSENT FOR THIS TYPE OF RIDE! I am absolutely SICKKK at how good this was. But was I actually surprised it was so good? WAS ANYONE REALLY SURPRISED?? I mean it’s Rachel Gillig. The only work she has out is one of the best fantasy reads i’ve ever read and yes I will die on that hill. Obviously i’m going to get into my points about the story, doing a breakdown, and my rating but I did want to make an important note on Rachel sharing how this books journey went. She shares in her acknowledgment that she’d became very brain fogged and tired after having COVID and she struggled hard to write. This fell somewhere in between her success for her Shepherd King duology. But she prevailed and we got this beautiful and amazing story that is obviously the start to a new story and I just want to say thank you to her for giving us this and pushing forward despite her creative and health obstacles.
٠ ࣪⭑- ❝ɪ ᴅɪᴅɴ’ᴛ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ɪᴛ ɴᴏᴡ. ɪ ᴋɴᴇᴡ ᴇxᴀᴄᴛʟʏ ʜᴏᴡ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱɪɢɴꜱ—ᴋɴᴇᴡ ᴇxᴀᴄᴛʟʏ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ɢᴏɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ʜᴀᴘᴘᴇɴ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ. ɪᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ʜᴀᴘᴘᴇɴɪɴɢ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ɴᴏᴡ. ɪ ᴡᴀꜱ ꜰᴀʟʟɪɴɢ ɪɴ ʟᴏᴠᴇ.❞ ༝༚༝༚
ᖭ༏ᖫ- I think I knew from the start that I would love this friend group. Benji, though carrying a lot of weight in his royal shoes was like the little brother, then there’s Rory the not so knightly knight, the serious and Maternal knight Maude, and their companions Six and the gargoyle. They’re all so vastly different and represent such different struggles of their own, even if they all do unfortunately have to answer to their shared nickname of Bartholomew. This story isn’t just funny, and the romance playful yet yearning, kind, and sweet, but it also shows how different we all view the world. When you really sit back and think, it’s a heavy hitter. I think this book displays character development both good and bad in such an impressive way because it’s not unrealistic. And even if it is fiction, realism is such an important part of storytelling sometimes (especially if that’s what the authors purpose was going for which it was).
ᖭ༏ᖫ- This 100% without a doubt, shoot me in the head if i’m wrong, that everyone’s favorite character is the gargoyle. IM SORRY I DONT MAKE THE RULES. I loved his fun, curious, and child like nature (come to find out he actually is a child which only made my heart ache more each time he cried but we can talk about that later). What’s so funny about his friendship with Six is that even though it may have appeared one sided in the beginning, it was SO obvious that Six felt the need to protect him even if he was technically HER protector. She never wanted anyone to yell at him and she always went to bat for him regardless of the crazy things he said or how he always got metaphors wrong. Rory and gargoyle brought exactly the comedic relief that Rachel Gillig manages to slide into her books and that fundamental element always tends to make a book easier to read even if it’s a case where it’s not the best story. Gargoyle may have cried, shrieked, screamed, had attitudes, and somehow always managed to miss the purpose of most things but he’s actually a lot wiser than his surface level image projects him as. Even if he is a child at heart, he’s wise for his time being alive (or dead technically I guess?). He’s always known who he was deep inside and he always knew who Six was meant to be outside of Aisling and being a Diviner. Though his idea of life outside the Cathedral was a bit scattered, he knew the idea well enough and that was a big part in discovering the hidden truths behind the Omens and Gods being nothing but a sham because it always comes back around to money and power doesn’t it?
٠
ᖭ༏ᖫ- I think Rory and Six are Grumpy X Sunshine except Rory would be sunshine and Six would be grumpy LMFAO. And honestly having it flipped makes it funnier and more likable. Even with Rory’s sour outlook on the world due to his upbringing, honestly he’s super fun. He also reminds of those childish kids who say “𝘐’𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦, 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴.” (⸝⸝ᵕᴗᵕ⸝⸝). Of course he takes his jabs at Six and always pesters her and makes fun of what she wears but the man is a flirt okay? He could never resist slipping a naughty joke in from time to time and he was so desperate to see and understand Six at her core. And I don’t even mean desperate to see her eyes under her gossamer like everyone else. He truly believed she should be free to live her life far before Six realized it herself and I adore selfless people. Everyone always wanted something from Six but Rory only wanted her to be free and live in truth rather than in a rose colored looking glass and i’m so glad Six loved him for it. Six arguably lost everything from her life, to the only girls (the other diviners) she trusted, to her mother figure, and the only things she knew and believed in, but Rory was right there to catch her when the truth made her fall.
ᖭ༏ᖫ- On the outside it seemed that Rory, Maude, and Benji’s friendship was tight knit and almost family-like but every surface tends to have its cracks. My theory is that from the moment Benji learned the five Omens did not favor him (though this isn’t technically true since the Gods are not real Gods and never really existed), he connected this to his grandfathers mistakes as king and how he openly doubted the Omens and was put to death and he doesn’t want the same fate. Though Benji too, does not share the same belief in the Gods how Traum does, just like his grandfather did, obviously it’s hard to break centuries old beliefs without getting stoned to death for it. Benji is very young, just a kid who is now king and he’s now in a desperate attempt to not only tamp down the bad mark his grandfather made on the kingdom, but to prove himself worthy of his title, and build confidence in his decisions without his knighthood or alcohol to coach him. Like any ruler, he seeks it the only way he knows how through power and money. Benji’s change of heart is either a direct link to his mistreatment from his people and him feeling undercut by his close friends, or my other assumption is somehow, someway he was turned into another Omen and his cloudless eyes that come and go seems to be an indicator of that. In the end he managed to turn friends to foes and fancies himself a queen diviner to match his status.
ᖭ༏ᖫ- My heart broke at the end of this book but thank Bartholomew there’s more to come! I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but I didn’t quite enjoy this one as much as my last Fantasy read (Shield of Sparrows amazing book and check out my review!) but I still enjoyed it just as much as I expected to and why I gave it such a high rating. I’m glad Rachel Gillig still hasn’t disappointed me. I know this review is long but if you read till the end then imagine me sending you a virtual kiss. <3
❝𝐅𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐥𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧.❞ 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔
Want to read
January 21, 2024After the Shepherd King duology, I’ll read anything Rachel Gillig writes. First book on 2025 shelf, so excited!!
Also, MOTH IS IN THE TITLE so yeah I’ll be anticipating this until it releases!
Also, MOTH IS IN THE TITLE so yeah I’ll be anticipating this until it releases!
July 2, 2025
i immediately regret my decision to read this before the series is finished. the wait for book 2 is going to be torture. 😭
RGs brain is seriously something else. she has a marvellous talent for creating stories so unique and special. and while i dont necessarily think (as of right now) this story is as deep or developed as her shepherd king series, it still delivers on the atmosphere and magic. and where it really excels is the characters.
my goodness, the characters in this are top tier. im surprised at how fleshed out all of them are with such a basic plot. the growth sybil goes through is extremely rewarding, not to mentioned how perfect her relationship with rory develops. its the stuff of romance dreams.
even though i found the ending a bit of an eye roll, im still super invested in the characters and desperate to see where the story takes them next!
↠ 4 stars
RGs brain is seriously something else. she has a marvellous talent for creating stories so unique and special. and while i dont necessarily think (as of right now) this story is as deep or developed as her shepherd king series, it still delivers on the atmosphere and magic. and where it really excels is the characters.
my goodness, the characters in this are top tier. im surprised at how fleshed out all of them are with such a basic plot. the growth sybil goes through is extremely rewarding, not to mentioned how perfect her relationship with rory develops. its the stuff of romance dreams.
even though i found the ending a bit of an eye roll, im still super invested in the characters and desperate to see where the story takes them next!
↠ 4 stars
May 3, 2025
4.5 ⭐️ Bartholomew 🥲❤️
August 28, 2025
On my defense, I tried. Like seriously, I tried. Tooth and nails.
I genuinely wanted to like it. To love it. To treasure its words within my heart with a lock and chain, like I did with so many books before.
I could say I wanted to grasp it. To even understand it. To disassemble it piece by piece like some kind of clockmaker, trying to understand how the engine of the beast works.
At some point I thought to myself, well, maybe this is a joke. On us. Some of kind of quirky and wild satire of romantasies and the cliches they so usually fell for.
I kinda was hoping for Rachel Gillig to redeem the genre and restore my faith that books of this kind can be, you know, good .
Never have it ever crossed my mind that my beloved Gillig, the one I came to adored and worship in One Dark Window, would deceived me this way. And write this dumpster fire of a book.
It bewildens me and shocks me, how the same person can write in such contrast and distorted ways. How her pen can craft something as marvelous and bewitching as The Shepherd King duology and at the same time, something as bad and plain and dull as her most recent release, The Knight and The Moth.
By the way, people claiming that this crap is anywhere better than One Dark Window, for the sake and safe of humankind, get yourself tested. No shade. I'm seriously concerned about your health.
Same for all those of you giving it five stars so easily... and yes, I know. I don't mean to sound pedantic. Nor condescending. And I also know that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and like whatever they like, this a free world, and blah, blah, blah.
But, for real, folks, what are you on? Hand over heart, I'm kindly asking cause no matter where I look: objectively speaking, this book is no five stars material at all.
It can be misleading though. I'll grant you that.
The beginning is very promising and paints you a picture that doesn't correlate to what comes further along.
From the get go, Gillig goes for the same eerie, gothic vibe that worked her so well in both One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crowns, her previous highly praised and critically acclaimed duology. And succeeds. At least for the very first three chapters.
We're introduced to the Cathedral, the Diviners, the gargoyles, the Omens, the sweetery rotten spring waters at the heart of the Cathedral, where Diviners literally drown to give her portents....
We are led to believe that these Diviners are holy, revered, even feared for what they do. Even the tone in these early stages is serious, aiming to that dark and gothic vibe we Gillig fans came to know and love so well.
Then things turn an unexpected point... and quickly everything goes south. And just a very few pages after.
Out of the blue, and without too much thinking, our protagonist, stellar Diviner number Six, decides she wants to have a little fun and get a taste of what life could be beyond the walls of the Cathedral, behind the ones she's been living for ten years now. All because an ignoble knight told her that. (Side note 1, take a shot for every time you read ignoble. Or armor. Or tor. Or shroud. You're welcome).
Next thing we know, we are thrown in the midst of a frat party between knights and diviners, with these after all not so holy women behaving more like your average hormonal college girls in a wild night out, than the pious women we were led to believe they were on chapter one.
Then, they're rolling in the hay with these men, or smoking idleweed, a ridiculous anachronism for smoking a joint in this world.
Tell me how to pull you out of immersion without telling me how to pull you out of immersion.
In case you're wondering, this is the exact moment I've started to rolling my eyes and realized this book wasn't going to be nowhere near as good as The Shepherd King duology.
I mean, I should've known better when I first learned that atrocity of names, cause what in the seven hells are those? Rory Myndacious ? Benji ?
Suffice to say, things went a downward spiral from this very moment.
The others Diviners dissappear mysteriously one by one, then poor and heartbroken Six (how, we could only figure, given the little interaction we're given between the girls) goes to the ignoble knight and the king, whom she known for like two days to help her seek her roommies.
And because nothing in this book makes sense, she's tossed in the middle of a quest for some magical objects who would grant great power to the person who bears them all (Side note 2, If collecting all said magical artifacts to empower yourself isn't enough hint of your typical villain, then I don't know what it is. No, I wasn't shocked at the plot twist at the end. Yes, I saw it coming from the very beginning. How come the rest of the characters didn't foresee that, is something only works in stories as bad plotted as this one ).
The rest of the book is them challenging these so called gods, retrieving the objects, rinse and repeat. All of it in the midst of very inconsequential fighting scenes that led absolutely nowhere, poor attempts of trying to be funny (which is, by the way, contradictory to the gothic vibe she early set up and the serious tone of the religious topics she's trying to portray) most of them in the mouth of the gargoyle, the only and one character worth saving in this absolute mess, and endless, long dead ass descriptions of pieces of armor and sky conditions, enough to fed weather channel reports for a lifetime.
Oh, and let´s not forget the lackluster romance, that grows out of nowhere. One blink and you missed it type of kind, cause one moment they're loathing each other, and the next chapter they're salivating towards each other. We're supposed to believe they're... in love? More insta lust, I'd dare to say, like nowadays trend in most romantasies.
Whatever. It's not believable and that's all you need to know.
And the reason it's that way is because the characters are cardboard like.
They have no personality nor motivations nor whatsoever. We know them in a very surface level, that makes it so hard for us to even care about them.
As I said it above, the one character who stands out the most is a batlike gargoyle, who serves both as the FMC's cutesy companion on duty and as the comic relief at the same time.
That a side character is the most interesting one, should be a walking red flag on itself.
I'm still having a hard time processing that this bloody mess came from the same mind that crafted One Dark Window, one of my top reads last year.
Call me crazy, but at times I felt like it wasn't just Gillig who wrote this book. Like it wasn't her and only her the person who wrote these lines, but that there were others involved in the process.
And no. This is not another conspiracy theory, or something I made up out of thin air.
There's a whole article in The New Yorker, earlier this year, about how most of these romantasies novels are manufactured in publishing houses, by book packagers.
In English: publishing houses assigned a team of side writers and editors to a potential author to help them craft a story. They all write in the author's name . And voilà: that's how a new super hyped up romantasy is born.
Ever wondered why lately all these stories look and feel the same, like reading different iterations of the same story over and over again?
Well, it certainly does smell like something in those likes happened here. Because, there's no other explanation at how this book ended up being so YAish, so formulaic and so soulless, in stark contrast to how original, innovative and fresh felt her previous work.
Besides how jarring and juvenile the dialogues sound in this novel every time a character dares to open its mouth.
Some reviewers said that the writing was all over the place, and I couldn't agree more.
So, don't be on the look out for the Gillig you came to adored in here, cause she's nowhere to be found within these pages.
All in all, a miss for Gillig. Like I said at the beginning of this review, I wanted to love this. I came with my pen prepped, willing to give it five stars...and found myself torn apart in disbelief.
I expected more, and that because I know what the author is capable of. That she's a talented and skillful writer, who can weave greater things than this crap over here.
Maybe next time.
You'll like it if you're a Rachel Gillig super fan and you're not a picky reader like me.
That, or if you're on the lookout for a snoozefest.
Anyway, keep your expectations low. And be wary of all those gleaming five star reviews. "All that is gold does not glitter", my friends. Never better said.
Quality based rating: ⭐️⭐️ (2 stars)
Liked based rating: ⭐️⭐️ (1,5 stars)
No gargoyles were harmed during the making of this review.
This was written with a great dose of sarcasm. Laugh it off and don't take it too personal.
I genuinely wanted to like it. To love it. To treasure its words within my heart with a lock and chain, like I did with so many books before.
I could say I wanted to grasp it. To even understand it. To disassemble it piece by piece like some kind of clockmaker, trying to understand how the engine of the beast works.
At some point I thought to myself, well, maybe this is a joke. On us. Some of kind of quirky and wild satire of romantasies and the cliches they so usually fell for.
I kinda was hoping for Rachel Gillig to redeem the genre and restore my faith that books of this kind can be, you know, good .
Never have it ever crossed my mind that my beloved Gillig, the one I came to adored and worship in One Dark Window, would deceived me this way. And write this dumpster fire of a book.
It bewildens me and shocks me, how the same person can write in such contrast and distorted ways. How her pen can craft something as marvelous and bewitching as The Shepherd King duology and at the same time, something as bad and plain and dull as her most recent release, The Knight and The Moth.
By the way, people claiming that this crap is anywhere better than One Dark Window, for the sake and safe of humankind, get yourself tested. No shade. I'm seriously concerned about your health.
Same for all those of you giving it five stars so easily... and yes, I know. I don't mean to sound pedantic. Nor condescending. And I also know that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and like whatever they like, this a free world, and blah, blah, blah.
But, for real, folks, what are you on? Hand over heart, I'm kindly asking cause no matter where I look: objectively speaking, this book is no five stars material at all.
It can be misleading though. I'll grant you that.
The beginning is very promising and paints you a picture that doesn't correlate to what comes further along.
From the get go, Gillig goes for the same eerie, gothic vibe that worked her so well in both One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crowns, her previous highly praised and critically acclaimed duology. And succeeds. At least for the very first three chapters.
We're introduced to the Cathedral, the Diviners, the gargoyles, the Omens, the sweetery rotten spring waters at the heart of the Cathedral, where Diviners literally drown to give her portents....
We are led to believe that these Diviners are holy, revered, even feared for what they do. Even the tone in these early stages is serious, aiming to that dark and gothic vibe we Gillig fans came to know and love so well.
Then things turn an unexpected point... and quickly everything goes south. And just a very few pages after.
Out of the blue, and without too much thinking, our protagonist, stellar Diviner number Six, decides she wants to have a little fun and get a taste of what life could be beyond the walls of the Cathedral, behind the ones she's been living for ten years now. All because an ignoble knight told her that. (Side note 1, take a shot for every time you read ignoble. Or armor. Or tor. Or shroud. You're welcome).
Next thing we know, we are thrown in the midst of a frat party between knights and diviners, with these after all not so holy women behaving more like your average hormonal college girls in a wild night out, than the pious women we were led to believe they were on chapter one.
Then, they're rolling in the hay with these men, or smoking idleweed, a ridiculous anachronism for smoking a joint in this world.
Tell me how to pull you out of immersion without telling me how to pull you out of immersion.
In case you're wondering, this is the exact moment I've started to rolling my eyes and realized this book wasn't going to be nowhere near as good as The Shepherd King duology.
I mean, I should've known better when I first learned that atrocity of names, cause what in the seven hells are those? Rory Myndacious ? Benji ?
Suffice to say, things went a downward spiral from this very moment.
The others Diviners dissappear mysteriously one by one, then poor and heartbroken Six (how, we could only figure, given the little interaction we're given between the girls) goes to the ignoble knight and the king, whom she known for like two days to help her seek her roommies.
And because nothing in this book makes sense, she's tossed in the middle of a quest for some magical objects who would grant great power to the person who bears them all (Side note 2, If collecting all said magical artifacts to empower yourself isn't enough hint of your typical villain, then I don't know what it is. No, I wasn't shocked at the plot twist at the end. Yes, I saw it coming from the very beginning. How come the rest of the characters didn't foresee that, is something only works in stories as bad plotted as this one ).
The rest of the book is them challenging these so called gods, retrieving the objects, rinse and repeat. All of it in the midst of very inconsequential fighting scenes that led absolutely nowhere, poor attempts of trying to be funny (which is, by the way, contradictory to the gothic vibe she early set up and the serious tone of the religious topics she's trying to portray) most of them in the mouth of the gargoyle, the only and one character worth saving in this absolute mess, and endless, long dead ass descriptions of pieces of armor and sky conditions, enough to fed weather channel reports for a lifetime.
Oh, and let´s not forget the lackluster romance, that grows out of nowhere. One blink and you missed it type of kind, cause one moment they're loathing each other, and the next chapter they're salivating towards each other. We're supposed to believe they're... in love? More insta lust, I'd dare to say, like nowadays trend in most romantasies.
Whatever. It's not believable and that's all you need to know.
And the reason it's that way is because the characters are cardboard like.
They have no personality nor motivations nor whatsoever. We know them in a very surface level, that makes it so hard for us to even care about them.
As I said it above, the one character who stands out the most is a batlike gargoyle, who serves both as the FMC's cutesy companion on duty and as the comic relief at the same time.
That a side character is the most interesting one, should be a walking red flag on itself.
I'm still having a hard time processing that this bloody mess came from the same mind that crafted One Dark Window, one of my top reads last year.
Call me crazy, but at times I felt like it wasn't just Gillig who wrote this book. Like it wasn't her and only her the person who wrote these lines, but that there were others involved in the process.
And no. This is not another conspiracy theory, or something I made up out of thin air.
There's a whole article in The New Yorker, earlier this year, about how most of these romantasies novels are manufactured in publishing houses, by book packagers.
In English: publishing houses assigned a team of side writers and editors to a potential author to help them craft a story. They all write in the author's name . And voilà: that's how a new super hyped up romantasy is born.
Ever wondered why lately all these stories look and feel the same, like reading different iterations of the same story over and over again?
Well, it certainly does smell like something in those likes happened here. Because, there's no other explanation at how this book ended up being so YAish, so formulaic and so soulless, in stark contrast to how original, innovative and fresh felt her previous work.
Besides how jarring and juvenile the dialogues sound in this novel every time a character dares to open its mouth.
Some reviewers said that the writing was all over the place, and I couldn't agree more.
So, don't be on the look out for the Gillig you came to adored in here, cause she's nowhere to be found within these pages.
All in all, a miss for Gillig. Like I said at the beginning of this review, I wanted to love this. I came with my pen prepped, willing to give it five stars...and found myself torn apart in disbelief.
I expected more, and that because I know what the author is capable of. That she's a talented and skillful writer, who can weave greater things than this crap over here.
Maybe next time.
You'll like it if you're a Rachel Gillig super fan and you're not a picky reader like me.
That, or if you're on the lookout for a snoozefest.
Anyway, keep your expectations low. And be wary of all those gleaming five star reviews. "All that is gold does not glitter", my friends. Never better said.
Quality based rating: ⭐️⭐️ (2 stars)
Liked based rating: ⭐️⭐️ (1,5 stars)
No gargoyles were harmed during the making of this review.
This was written with a great dose of sarcasm. Laugh it off and don't take it too personal.
September 4, 2025
I say this with the utmost awe: the knight and the moth surpassed all my expectations. yes, I adored the shepherd king duet. but this new world is something else. It’s more refined, more assured, and more magical. she leveled up her craft in ways that feel seismic. her voice is sharper, the worldbuilding deeper, the atmosphere so potent I swear I could smell the rotting flowers of aisling cathedral through the pages. i wanna go there now!!! take me!!
this book is drenched in mood. It’s gothic and elegant, lush and haunted, dreamlike and jagged all at once. you don’t read it so much as fall into it. the setting. the lonely tor, the eerie cathedral, the ancient gargoyles. all of it feels like stepping into a living, breathing myth. i was literally freaking there!!! It’s romantasy, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s like mystic gothic or divine folklore and that magical atmosphere 🌞
which brings me to what made this book special, its originality!! romantasy feels like they’re all the same. but rachel’s worlds are always a stand out. the diviners of aisling, with their shrouds and number names, the bloody dreams, none of this felt borrowed. It felt utterly, bracingly new. she restores my faith in the genre every time, but this book especially reminded me that romantasy can still surprise me, the whole book hums with the sacred. It’s about gods and dreams and duty, but also about girlhood, identity, and rebellion i loved every page of it!!
the pacing never drags. each chapter builds on a deepening sense of mystery, and the lore is rich without ever being overwhelming or info-dumpy. the mythos of the omens and the stone objects. the loom stone and the chime were all haunting. i’m on my knees!! it made the whole world feel ancient and dangerous in the best possible way.
➷ sybil delling is fierce and fractured, witty and angry and aching for something more. she’s razor sharp, her loneliness is clear thru the book and watching her faith, fate, and fury in a world that wants to make her mythic was heartbreaking and galvanizing. her dynamic with rory (my charcoal eyeliner king) made me want to punch my pillow 🤭 banter was so good!!
➷ rodrick myndacious. rory is blasphemous in a kingdom built on devotion. he doesn’t care for the omens or their prophecies, and he challenges the rules of aisling cathedral just by breathing lmao. but underneath all that rough defiance is someone quietly unraveling. he’s been hurt by belief. someone who still, somehow, wants to believe in something even if he can’t admit it. I loved that he never loses his edge. he stays sharp. he fights with words. and the way he sees sybil, the way he challenges her and listens. really listens makes the slow build between them feel like it was always inevitable. i’m also obsessed with the fact that he reminded me so much of ravyn from one dark window! 🫦
— you know that feeling when two characters start talking and the air practically sizzles with tension? that’s sybil and rory. their conversations are everything. they jab, deflect, parry with sharp words and yet, somehow, it never feels mean. It feels necessary. like they need to spar in order to understand each other. neither of them backs down. sybil, is not here to be impressed. and Rory isn’t about to bow to cathedral dogma 🤣 It makes their interactions volatile, unpredictable, and just so damn satisfying. you get the sense that if they ever stop arguing, the book will become boring! i’m obsessed with their verbal sparring!! the romance in this book hurts in the best way. It’s slow, it’s tense, it’s earned. It starts in mutual suspicion, then conflict, and slowly into something complicated and tender and real. there’s chemistry, yes. but what makes it work is the emotional weight behind it. these aren’t characters falling for what they see beneath each other’s masks: the exhaustion, the rage, the softness that’s had to learn how to armor itself. just two people who claw their way toward connection like it might just save them both somehow! protect my babies at all costs!!
➷ bartholomew. i didn’t expect to fall so hard for a winged, bat eared chunk of limestone who insists on calling everyone “bartholomew,” but here we are 😭 he’s hilarious in that grumpy grandpa way, but underneath stone, there’s real heart. he’s one of the few constants in Sybil’s ever fracturing world, and I found myself genuinely moved by how protective and loyal he was. i love how in both her dialogues there’s a mythical magical creature that accompany the fmc!! he’s also very brilliant. stone-sphinx-meets-wistful-uncle kind of brilliant lmao his dry commentary added perfect tonal balance to the haunting mysticism, it wouldn’t be the same without him. I would absolutely read a whole book from his pov.
Rachel Gillig you will always be loved by me 🙂↕️
***ARC & ALC provided by the publishers—Orbit Books—Hachette Audio—in exchange for an honest review.***
this book is drenched in mood. It’s gothic and elegant, lush and haunted, dreamlike and jagged all at once. you don’t read it so much as fall into it. the setting. the lonely tor, the eerie cathedral, the ancient gargoyles. all of it feels like stepping into a living, breathing myth. i was literally freaking there!!! It’s romantasy, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s like mystic gothic or divine folklore and that magical atmosphere 🌞
which brings me to what made this book special, its originality!! romantasy feels like they’re all the same. but rachel’s worlds are always a stand out. the diviners of aisling, with their shrouds and number names, the bloody dreams, none of this felt borrowed. It felt utterly, bracingly new. she restores my faith in the genre every time, but this book especially reminded me that romantasy can still surprise me, the whole book hums with the sacred. It’s about gods and dreams and duty, but also about girlhood, identity, and rebellion i loved every page of it!!
the pacing never drags. each chapter builds on a deepening sense of mystery, and the lore is rich without ever being overwhelming or info-dumpy. the mythos of the omens and the stone objects. the loom stone and the chime were all haunting. i’m on my knees!! it made the whole world feel ancient and dangerous in the best possible way.
➷ sybil delling is fierce and fractured, witty and angry and aching for something more. she’s razor sharp, her loneliness is clear thru the book and watching her faith, fate, and fury in a world that wants to make her mythic was heartbreaking and galvanizing. her dynamic with rory (my charcoal eyeliner king) made me want to punch my pillow 🤭 banter was so good!!
➷ rodrick myndacious. rory is blasphemous in a kingdom built on devotion. he doesn’t care for the omens or their prophecies, and he challenges the rules of aisling cathedral just by breathing lmao. but underneath all that rough defiance is someone quietly unraveling. he’s been hurt by belief. someone who still, somehow, wants to believe in something even if he can’t admit it. I loved that he never loses his edge. he stays sharp. he fights with words. and the way he sees sybil, the way he challenges her and listens. really listens makes the slow build between them feel like it was always inevitable. i’m also obsessed with the fact that he reminded me so much of ravyn from one dark window! 🫦
— you know that feeling when two characters start talking and the air practically sizzles with tension? that’s sybil and rory. their conversations are everything. they jab, deflect, parry with sharp words and yet, somehow, it never feels mean. It feels necessary. like they need to spar in order to understand each other. neither of them backs down. sybil, is not here to be impressed. and Rory isn’t about to bow to cathedral dogma 🤣 It makes their interactions volatile, unpredictable, and just so damn satisfying. you get the sense that if they ever stop arguing, the book will become boring! i’m obsessed with their verbal sparring!! the romance in this book hurts in the best way. It’s slow, it’s tense, it’s earned. It starts in mutual suspicion, then conflict, and slowly into something complicated and tender and real. there’s chemistry, yes. but what makes it work is the emotional weight behind it. these aren’t characters falling for what they see beneath each other’s masks: the exhaustion, the rage, the softness that’s had to learn how to armor itself. just two people who claw their way toward connection like it might just save them both somehow! protect my babies at all costs!!
➷ bartholomew. i didn’t expect to fall so hard for a winged, bat eared chunk of limestone who insists on calling everyone “bartholomew,” but here we are 😭 he’s hilarious in that grumpy grandpa way, but underneath stone, there’s real heart. he’s one of the few constants in Sybil’s ever fracturing world, and I found myself genuinely moved by how protective and loyal he was. i love how in both her dialogues there’s a mythical magical creature that accompany the fmc!! he’s also very brilliant. stone-sphinx-meets-wistful-uncle kind of brilliant lmao his dry commentary added perfect tonal balance to the haunting mysticism, it wouldn’t be the same without him. I would absolutely read a whole book from his pov.
Rachel Gillig you will always be loved by me 🙂↕️
***ARC & ALC provided by the publishers—Orbit Books—Hachette Audio—in exchange for an honest review.***
May 25, 2025
Don’t anybody look at me right now, oh my GOD.
It’s been a while since I read a book that I knew within the first chapter was likely to be five stars, and here we are. Rachel Gillig the writer that you are.
It’s been a while since I read a book that I knew within the first chapter was likely to be five stars, and here we are. Rachel Gillig the writer that you are.
July 16, 2025
Six isn’t like other girls — she drowns so she can see the future. She lives in a creepy castle with her five adopted sisters and a real bitch of an abbess. Rory is a knight, but not, like, a Waterhouse painting knight. More like an eye-rolling knight, with smudged makeup and slumpy shoulders. They need to join forces to solve a mystery🕵🏻♂️ (it’s not a fun mystery it’s actually quite distressing but I thought the emoji would help). There’s also a boy king and a lady knight, but the real star of the show is Rory’s gasping, pathetic desperation for Six. The yearning is exquisite. He’s a puddle of adoration at her feet. It’s unseemly. Jar that shit up and slather it on toast.
Ultimately, this is two love stories: one between Six and Rory, and one between me and a gargoyle. He can’t really be explained, he must be experienced. Just please: don’t yell at him.
Ultimately, this is two love stories: one between Six and Rory, and one between me and a gargoyle. He can’t really be explained, he must be experienced. Just please: don’t yell at him.
June 25, 2025
maybe the real bartholomew was the friends we made along the way
Read my full review
that the act of saying someone’s name can be holy, can be its own form of devotion?? sickening!!
BARTHOLOMEW (see: crying over stone gargoyle’s tragic past)
the fact that the love interest is directly inspired by tamino?? bark bark bark
thank you orbit for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
Bookstagram | Blog
Read my full review
that the act of saying someone’s name can be holy, can be its own form of devotion?? sickening!!
BARTHOLOMEW (see: crying over stone gargoyle’s tragic past)
the fact that the love interest is directly inspired by tamino?? bark bark bark
thank you orbit for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
Bookstagram | Blog
August 24, 2025
⚔️"The moth is drawn to cursed divine, the knight is forged in blood and spine.
In tangled truths and gods unkind—will love redeem, or stay confined?"⚔️
Welcome to Traum—a world of masked faith, drowning springs, and blindfolded prophecy. And at the very center of it all stands Aisling Cathedral, an eerie monastery cloaked in ritual and silence, where orphaned girls called Diviners live stripped of names, faces, and futures.
The Knight and the Moth is not just a fantasy—it’s a gothic unraveling. Imagine if The Secret History met The Handmaid’s Tale on windswept cliffs, then kissed The Witcher under a crescent moon. Yes, it’s that dark. And yes, it’s that dazzling. If you ever wondered what it would feel like to be cloistered in a cathedral of bone-deep secrets, gaslighted into martyrdom, and then dragged through the mire of grief, rebellion, and myth—The Knight and the Moth answers you. Not gently. Not quietly. It answers in screams muffled by holy water, in fluttering moth wings behind blindfolds, and in dreams that claw back.
🕯️Atmosphere: — A Darkly Woven Tale of Diviners and Desire 🕯️
The setting is Aisling Cathedral—a house of God draped in shadow and sacrament, nestled deep within mountain bones, where young girls, called Diviners, are trained to bleed beauty from pain. Their memories are offerings. Their bodies, clay to be carved. There’s no sunlight here—only moonlight against marble, and the slick sound of water in underground springs that drink dreams like wine.
~Mystic saga: Foundlings and False Gods-
╰┈➤Characters:
🔖Sybil Delling (Aka -Six)
Obedient dreamer, reluctant rebel-
Sybil, known for most of the story as Six, is a foundling girl raised in Aisling Cathedral to be a Diviner. Her identity is erased, her eyes shrouded, and her life defined by obedience, ritual, and the burden of dreaming for others. Sybil is fiercely loyal to her fellow Diviners, yet haunted by a longing for freedom and selfhood. Her journey is one of painful awakening: from obedient tool to avenger, from martyr to agent of her own fate. Sybil's psychological arc is marked by trauma, grief, and the slow reclamation of her name, her desires, and her agency. Her relationship with Rory is both a source of challenge and healing, and her bond with the gargoyle, Bartholomew, is a thread of love and loss that runs through the entire narrative. Sybil, the girl without memory, is both flame and ash. Her journey is one of unmasking a system of worship that feeds on girlhood, on silence, on sacrifice. As she claws back her past, she begins to see herself not as a lamb, but as the knife. I related to her stubbornness, pride in her occupation, and her annoyance with the king’s knight, Rory.
🤺Rodrick "Rory" Myndacious
Irreverent knight, wounded survivor-
A foil and enigma, his charisma and darkness deepen the story’s romantic tension and underscore themes of loyalty and moral ambiguity. Rory is a knight with a foundling's past, a thief's cunning, and a heretic's tongue. Scarred by his upbringing under the Artful Brigand and shaped by Maude's mentorship, Rory is both fiercely independent and deeply loyal to those he loves. His skepticism of Aisling's faith and the Omens' divinity makes him an outsider among the knights, but also a catalyst for Sybil's transformation. Rory's relationship with Sybil is a dance of antagonism and attraction, each pushing the other to confront uncomfortable truths. Beneath his bravado lies vulnerability, a longing for belonging, and a capacity for tenderness that is revealed in his care for Sybil and his willingness to risk everything for her.And then there is Rory. Oh, Rory. The knight with kohl around his eyes and rebellion in his blood. A ghost of a golden boy, he is all the things forbidden—blasphemy made flesh, with hands that shake and a mouth that lies prettily. He is not the salvation Sybil seeks, but the ruin she can't turn from. Their chemistry crackles like heresy at the altar. Every word exchanged is an unsaid prayer, a threat, a promise. Eliot, the Knight, is a revenant of grief—a ghost swaddled in armor, his dreams long dead, his sorrow a blade dulled by time. Their slow-burn connection is not romantic in the traditional sense. It is devotional, aching, spiritual, like two ruined saints recognizing one another across the altar.
⚔️ Enemies-to-dangerous-something. She glares, he smirks. She fights, he bleeds. Banter so sharp it could slice through destiny. Their chemistry? Unholy. Forbidden. Delicious. Their bond is built not on flirtation, but on wounds that speak the same language.
Together, they are a ruinous symphony. A knight who would fall on his sword for her. A woman who would rather bleed alone than ask for his hand.
🔖Bartholomew (aka Barty, aka my emotional support gargoyle):
Okay but listen—he’s a literal stone gremlin with bat wings and baby deer eyes, and yet somehow the most emotionally devastating character in the entire book? Make it make sense.
Once upon a twisted fairy tale, Bartholomew was the first Diviner. Yep. Not just some sidekick clinging to cathedral ceilings—he was the blueprint. And what did they do? Turned him into a gargoyle. A whole magical paperweight with trauma and loyalty issues.He’s funny in that offbeat, slightly unhinged way—like if a toddler learned sarcasm—but beneath the jokes? That boy is aching. All he’s ever wanted is love. A home. To be seen beyond the wings and stone and the “blessed guardian” nonsense.His loyalty to Sybil? Gut-wrenching. His backstory reveal? A punch to the soul. Honestly, he deserved to smite the entire clergy and take a nap afterward.
Bartholomew isn’t just the comic relief. He’s the tragedy no one saw coming. A creature made of old prayers, broken promises, and one too many “you’ll understand when you’re older” betrayals.Honestly? He reminds me of Dobby from Harry Potter, if Dobby was gothic, tragic, and had centuries of betrayal under his little bat belt.
Justice for Barty. Always!!!
📌The Diviners: Shadows Cast in Stone
Within the cold, echoing halls of Aisling Cathedral dwell the six Diviners — mystics bound by fate, whose whispered secrets shape the threads of destiny. Each carries a burden heavier than iron, cloaked in solemn rituals and haunted by omens only they can see. Their eyes hold the weight of countless futures, their hands tremble with the power to unmake or remake worlds.
🎭 What awaits / Tropes & Vibes:
✔️ Foundling Girls Club (No names, just numbers — because identity is overrated, right?)
✔️ Secret Sisterhood with Strict Rules (Obedience or else... no exceptions.) ✔️ Blood Magic & Rituals (Drowning + visions = a killer combo 💉🌊)
✔️ Blindfolded Seers (Eye-shrouded because seeing is too dangerous 👁️🚫)
✔️ False Gods Alert 🚨 (Omens = not divine, just very shady mortals with power flexes)
✔️ Cruel Matriarch Energy (Abbess aka “Love is pain, literally.”)
✔️ Cathedral Prison (Welcome to your gothic cage — no getting out alive)
✔️ Rebel Queen in Training (Sybil’s glow-up from obedient pawn to fiery rebel 🔥)
✔️ Foul-Mouthed Knight with a Heart (Rory’s a grumpy guardian who can’t help but care 💔)
✔️ Enemies? Lovers? Both. (Hate at first sight, later maybe not so much 😏)
✔️ Coming-of-Age Chaos (Find your name, find your power — if you survive)
✔️ Betrayal & Power Plays (Backstabbers gonna backstab—watch your back, always)
✔️ Grimdark Realness (Bleeding, broken, and brutally beautiful)
✔️ Gargoyle Bestie Vibes (Bartholomew, your stone-cold but soulful sidekick 🗿) ✔️ Cycle of Pain, Repeat 🔄 (Generations of abuse wrapped in blood and secrets)
✔️ Last One Standing (Sybil’s the final Diviner — pressure much?)
✔️ Secret Night Out (The forbidden fair — taste freedom, pay the price 🎡)
✔️ Prophecy with Side Effects (Visions come with a major “you’re screwed” tag)
Themes that Cut Like Consecrated Blades:
✦ Religious trauma as inheritance
✦ The commodification of girlhood in sacred spaces ✦ Memory loss as violence, grief as resistance
✦ Monstrous transformation—of body, belief, identity
✦ What happens when girls stop praying and start remembering
✦ Devotion that borders on destruction
✦ Power and surrender, not as opposites—but as reflections
✦ Queerness woven into fantasy without performance or apology
✦ How silence can be louder than screams
✦ Who are you when your past is rewritten?
-Every girl in this story is either a moth, an omen, or a gargoyle. And all of them are divine in their own ruin.
🕯️What Lingers:
~The weaving of language—lyrical, cryptic, and sharply symbolic.
~The divination rituals, equal parts terrifying and sacred.
~The feminist rage simmering beneath every dropped name and drowned girl.
~That final image: Sybil unshrouded, standing at the edge of the world.
~Each sentence reads like it was dipped in candle wax and scripture—rich, velvet prose that both soothes and suffocates. It’s the kind of writing that feels like prayer and eulogy in the same breath.Banter and all.
🌑 What Could Be Stronger:
A few mid-book sections meander slightly—especially during the sprite encounters. The pacing falters just before the final third, as the rebellion stretches across too many landscapes. Sometimes, the prose leans indulgent—so rich in style that it can blur clarity. And Benji’s betrayal, while narratively necessary, felt a touch underexplored emotionally. I wanted more details of the characters’ back stories and more after the rather abrupt ending.
For readers who love:
-Saints who sin.
-Heroines with wrath in their bones.
-Lovers whose devotion borders on damnation.
-And worlds where divinity is as dreadful as it is divine.
-Content warnings: religious abuse, ritual sacrifice, gaslighting, drowning, self-harm, child death, body horror, memory loss, grief
🪽Final Verdict:🌕🌕🌕🌘🌑 (3.5/5 full moons)
A Prophetic Start to a Promising Series-
The Knight and the Moth is a brutal, beautiful dismantling of false gods and found faith. It's for the girls who were told to obey, for the blindfolded ones who still dared to dream. If you loved Priory of the Orange Tree, Ninth House, or anything by Erin Morgenstern, this is your next obsession.
Came for the prophecy. Stay for the vengeance.
Stay for the moth. Burn the cathedral. For every girl who’s been told to kneel.For every girl who chose to rise instead. 🕯️
In tangled truths and gods unkind—will love redeem, or stay confined?"⚔️
Welcome to Traum—a world of masked faith, drowning springs, and blindfolded prophecy. And at the very center of it all stands Aisling Cathedral, an eerie monastery cloaked in ritual and silence, where orphaned girls called Diviners live stripped of names, faces, and futures.
The Knight and the Moth is not just a fantasy—it’s a gothic unraveling. Imagine if The Secret History met The Handmaid’s Tale on windswept cliffs, then kissed The Witcher under a crescent moon. Yes, it’s that dark. And yes, it’s that dazzling. If you ever wondered what it would feel like to be cloistered in a cathedral of bone-deep secrets, gaslighted into martyrdom, and then dragged through the mire of grief, rebellion, and myth—The Knight and the Moth answers you. Not gently. Not quietly. It answers in screams muffled by holy water, in fluttering moth wings behind blindfolds, and in dreams that claw back.
🕯️Atmosphere: — A Darkly Woven Tale of Diviners and Desire 🕯️
The setting is Aisling Cathedral—a house of God draped in shadow and sacrament, nestled deep within mountain bones, where young girls, called Diviners, are trained to bleed beauty from pain. Their memories are offerings. Their bodies, clay to be carved. There’s no sunlight here—only moonlight against marble, and the slick sound of water in underground springs that drink dreams like wine.
~Mystic saga: Foundlings and False Gods-
╰┈➤Characters:
🔖Sybil Delling (Aka -Six)
Obedient dreamer, reluctant rebel-
Sybil, known for most of the story as Six, is a foundling girl raised in Aisling Cathedral to be a Diviner. Her identity is erased, her eyes shrouded, and her life defined by obedience, ritual, and the burden of dreaming for others. Sybil is fiercely loyal to her fellow Diviners, yet haunted by a longing for freedom and selfhood. Her journey is one of painful awakening: from obedient tool to avenger, from martyr to agent of her own fate. Sybil's psychological arc is marked by trauma, grief, and the slow reclamation of her name, her desires, and her agency. Her relationship with Rory is both a source of challenge and healing, and her bond with the gargoyle, Bartholomew, is a thread of love and loss that runs through the entire narrative. Sybil, the girl without memory, is both flame and ash. Her journey is one of unmasking a system of worship that feeds on girlhood, on silence, on sacrifice. As she claws back her past, she begins to see herself not as a lamb, but as the knife. I related to her stubbornness, pride in her occupation, and her annoyance with the king’s knight, Rory.
“I dreamed of a knight with gold in his ears and charcoal around his eyes, who did all the ignoble things I asked of him.”
🤺Rodrick "Rory" Myndacious
Irreverent knight, wounded survivor-
A foil and enigma, his charisma and darkness deepen the story’s romantic tension and underscore themes of loyalty and moral ambiguity. Rory is a knight with a foundling's past, a thief's cunning, and a heretic's tongue. Scarred by his upbringing under the Artful Brigand and shaped by Maude's mentorship, Rory is both fiercely independent and deeply loyal to those he loves. His skepticism of Aisling's faith and the Omens' divinity makes him an outsider among the knights, but also a catalyst for Sybil's transformation. Rory's relationship with Sybil is a dance of antagonism and attraction, each pushing the other to confront uncomfortable truths. Beneath his bravado lies vulnerability, a longing for belonging, and a capacity for tenderness that is revealed in his care for Sybil and his willingness to risk everything for her.And then there is Rory. Oh, Rory. The knight with kohl around his eyes and rebellion in his blood. A ghost of a golden boy, he is all the things forbidden—blasphemy made flesh, with hands that shake and a mouth that lies prettily. He is not the salvation Sybil seeks, but the ruin she can't turn from. Their chemistry crackles like heresy at the altar. Every word exchanged is an unsaid prayer, a threat, a promise. Eliot, the Knight, is a revenant of grief—a ghost swaddled in armor, his dreams long dead, his sorrow a blade dulled by time. Their slow-burn connection is not romantic in the traditional sense. It is devotional, aching, spiritual, like two ruined saints recognizing one another across the altar.
⚔️ Enemies-to-dangerous-something. She glares, he smirks. She fights, he bleeds. Banter so sharp it could slice through destiny. Their chemistry? Unholy. Forbidden. Delicious. Their bond is built not on flirtation, but on wounds that speak the same language.
Together, they are a ruinous symphony. A knight who would fall on his sword for her. A woman who would rather bleed alone than ask for his hand.
“You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust.
“I have disdain in me, yes.”
“But none for you.”
🔖Bartholomew (aka Barty, aka my emotional support gargoyle):
Okay but listen—he’s a literal stone gremlin with bat wings and baby deer eyes, and yet somehow the most emotionally devastating character in the entire book? Make it make sense.
Once upon a twisted fairy tale, Bartholomew was the first Diviner. Yep. Not just some sidekick clinging to cathedral ceilings—he was the blueprint. And what did they do? Turned him into a gargoyle. A whole magical paperweight with trauma and loyalty issues.He’s funny in that offbeat, slightly unhinged way—like if a toddler learned sarcasm—but beneath the jokes? That boy is aching. All he’s ever wanted is love. A home. To be seen beyond the wings and stone and the “blessed guardian” nonsense.His loyalty to Sybil? Gut-wrenching. His backstory reveal? A punch to the soul. Honestly, he deserved to smite the entire clergy and take a nap afterward.
Bartholomew isn’t just the comic relief. He’s the tragedy no one saw coming. A creature made of old prayers, broken promises, and one too many “you’ll understand when you’re older” betrayals.Honestly? He reminds me of Dobby from Harry Potter, if Dobby was gothic, tragic, and had centuries of betrayal under his little bat belt.
Justice for Barty. Always!!!
📌The Diviners: Shadows Cast in Stone
Within the cold, echoing halls of Aisling Cathedral dwell the six Diviners — mystics bound by fate, whose whispered secrets shape the threads of destiny. Each carries a burden heavier than iron, cloaked in solemn rituals and haunted by omens only they can see. Their eyes hold the weight of countless futures, their hands tremble with the power to unmake or remake worlds.
🎭 What awaits / Tropes & Vibes:
✔️ Foundling Girls Club (No names, just numbers — because identity is overrated, right?)
✔️ Secret Sisterhood with Strict Rules (Obedience or else... no exceptions.) ✔️ Blood Magic & Rituals (Drowning + visions = a killer combo 💉🌊)
✔️ Blindfolded Seers (Eye-shrouded because seeing is too dangerous 👁️🚫)
✔️ False Gods Alert 🚨 (Omens = not divine, just very shady mortals with power flexes)
✔️ Cruel Matriarch Energy (Abbess aka “Love is pain, literally.”)
✔️ Cathedral Prison (Welcome to your gothic cage — no getting out alive)
✔️ Rebel Queen in Training (Sybil’s glow-up from obedient pawn to fiery rebel 🔥)
✔️ Foul-Mouthed Knight with a Heart (Rory’s a grumpy guardian who can’t help but care 💔)
✔️ Enemies? Lovers? Both. (Hate at first sight, later maybe not so much 😏)
✔️ Coming-of-Age Chaos (Find your name, find your power — if you survive)
✔️ Betrayal & Power Plays (Backstabbers gonna backstab—watch your back, always)
✔️ Grimdark Realness (Bleeding, broken, and brutally beautiful)
✔️ Gargoyle Bestie Vibes (Bartholomew, your stone-cold but soulful sidekick 🗿) ✔️ Cycle of Pain, Repeat 🔄 (Generations of abuse wrapped in blood and secrets)
✔️ Last One Standing (Sybil’s the final Diviner — pressure much?)
✔️ Secret Night Out (The forbidden fair — taste freedom, pay the price 🎡)
✔️ Prophecy with Side Effects (Visions come with a major “you’re screwed” tag)
Themes that Cut Like Consecrated Blades:
✦ Religious trauma as inheritance
✦ The commodification of girlhood in sacred spaces ✦ Memory loss as violence, grief as resistance
✦ Monstrous transformation—of body, belief, identity
✦ What happens when girls stop praying and start remembering
✦ Devotion that borders on destruction
✦ Power and surrender, not as opposites—but as reflections
✦ Queerness woven into fantasy without performance or apology
✦ How silence can be louder than screams
✦ Who are you when your past is rewritten?
-Every girl in this story is either a moth, an omen, or a gargoyle. And all of them are divine in their own ruin.
🕯️What Lingers:
~The weaving of language—lyrical, cryptic, and sharply symbolic.
~The divination rituals, equal parts terrifying and sacred.
~The feminist rage simmering beneath every dropped name and drowned girl.
~That final image: Sybil unshrouded, standing at the edge of the world.
~Each sentence reads like it was dipped in candle wax and scripture—rich, velvet prose that both soothes and suffocates. It’s the kind of writing that feels like prayer and eulogy in the same breath.Banter and all.
🌑 What Could Be Stronger:
A few mid-book sections meander slightly—especially during the sprite encounters. The pacing falters just before the final third, as the rebellion stretches across too many landscapes. Sometimes, the prose leans indulgent—so rich in style that it can blur clarity. And Benji’s betrayal, while narratively necessary, felt a touch underexplored emotionally. I wanted more details of the characters’ back stories and more after the rather abrupt ending.
For readers who love:
-Saints who sin.
-Heroines with wrath in their bones.
-Lovers whose devotion borders on damnation.
-And worlds where divinity is as dreadful as it is divine.
-Content warnings: religious abuse, ritual sacrifice, gaslighting, drowning, self-harm, child death, body horror, memory loss, grief
🪽Final Verdict:🌕🌕🌕🌘🌑 (3.5/5 full moons)
A Prophetic Start to a Promising Series-
The Knight and the Moth is a brutal, beautiful dismantling of false gods and found faith. It's for the girls who were told to obey, for the blindfolded ones who still dared to dream. If you loved Priory of the Orange Tree, Ninth House, or anything by Erin Morgenstern, this is your next obsession.
Came for the prophecy. Stay for the vengeance.
Stay for the moth. Burn the cathedral. For every girl who’s been told to kneel.For every girl who chose to rise instead. 🕯️
June 2, 2025
Not sure why this didn't update my review. Maybe I'm losing it lol. Anyway, full review to come, but I loved this story! It's so fairytale like and magical! Ugh so good!
I did hit a little bit of a lull around 60ish% - but still stayed engaged throughout. Settling on 4.25 stars for now. Not perfect, but better than a 4 star read for me.
Kinda excited for this one 😍 LOL. Maria's review gave me life and hyped me for this series and then Ivy's brought my expectations back to a normal level - I can't wait to see how it works out for me. I really want to love it. Here I go!! (Totally love and respect your opinions besties 💗)
🖤Achingly Romantic
🦋Haunted Abbeys
🖤Eerie Atmosphere
🦋Major Gothic Fairytale Vibes
🖤Tension x Banter
🦋Impossible Quests
🖤Omens x Prophecies
🦋Gargoyle Sidekicks
🖤Girls in Armor
🦋Monstrous Divinities
So close! 05/20
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ Connect with me on Instagram ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
➽─────────❥
I did hit a little bit of a lull around 60ish% - but still stayed engaged throughout. Settling on 4.25 stars for now. Not perfect, but better than a 4 star read for me.
Kinda excited for this one 😍 LOL. Maria's review gave me life and hyped me for this series and then Ivy's brought my expectations back to a normal level - I can't wait to see how it works out for me. I really want to love it. Here I go!! (Totally love and respect your opinions besties 💗)
🖤Achingly Romantic
🦋Haunted Abbeys
🖤Eerie Atmosphere
🦋Major Gothic Fairytale Vibes
🖤Tension x Banter
🦋Impossible Quests
🖤Omens x Prophecies
🦋Gargoyle Sidekicks
🖤Girls in Armor
🦋Monstrous Divinities
So close! 05/20
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ Connect with me on Instagram ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
➽─────────❥
May 23, 2025
Some books draw you in gently. This one drowns you in a spring that smells like rotten flowers and pulls you under until you see gods.
I knew I was in trouble by chapter one thanks to a limestone gargoyle who calls everyone ‘Bartholomew’ with zero context. And I loved him immediately. He is full of wisdom and weirdness and adorableness, and if you didn’t come for him originally, you’ll stay for him. He’s perfect.
But that’s just the beginning. Rachel Gillig builds a dark fantasy world with a cathedral, perched on a tor, and it’s less a building and more a character in its own right. Inside, a cloying spring churns with magic. In it, six foundling girls ritually drown, so they can fall into a dream where they can divine omens from their gods.
At the heart of this story is Sybil, otherwise known as ‘Six’, our protagonist. Her growth is slow and heart-stirring. She’s complicated, naive and a 'teacher’s pet' yet also loyal, compassionate and curious. I wasn’t her biggest fan at first, but she grew on me. What really pulled me in was the bond she had with the other five diviners, which was a loyal, fierce sisterhood.
What I found refreshing was that Sybil starts out physically strong and her character development is more around mental growth. No not like other girls/chosen one tropes. Just development that made me want to give her a hug.
Plus there’s also Rory, the foulest knight in all of the land. Or is he? Although he challenges Sybil's worldview, he also respects boundaries. He asks for consent and sews. Lots of green flags. I'd take a bet that Pedro Pascal would approve.
Now, it wasn't five star worthy although I really wanted it to be. I can't really put my finger on why, maybe it's a "me" problem. I wasn't quite as besotted with the main characters (gargoyle excluded obvs) and the magic system as I'd have liked to be perhaps. I think the magic system in One Dark Window/Two Twisted Crowns was also a lot more compelling for me, this one felt less impactful or something.
Additionally, I wanted more types of representation, as there wasn't much—no characters of colour—and a low key amount of queer rep. Nonetheless, I’m sure we’ll all welcome the age diversity in a major side character: Maude is 41 and she’s fleshed out satisfactorily.
Quibbles aside, this story hooked me. It’s drenched in dread and beauty, teeming with grief, longing and desire to be seen not for what you do, but for who you are and who you might be.
Personally, I’m most enthralled and endeared by the gargoyle and think he’s one of my favourite characters in fiction this year. I may have rated this less if it wasn't for him.
If you loved The Shepherd King duology, you’ll probably love this too. And even if you didn’t, this one might change your mind.
﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
Started one of my most anticipated books of 2025 and within the first chapter I can already tell that a fly-lecturing gargoyle who calls everyone Bartholomew is going to be my favourite character.
I knew I was in trouble by chapter one thanks to a limestone gargoyle who calls everyone ‘Bartholomew’ with zero context. And I loved him immediately. He is full of wisdom and weirdness and adorableness, and if you didn’t come for him originally, you’ll stay for him. He’s perfect.
But that’s just the beginning. Rachel Gillig builds a dark fantasy world with a cathedral, perched on a tor, and it’s less a building and more a character in its own right. Inside, a cloying spring churns with magic. In it, six foundling girls ritually drown, so they can fall into a dream where they can divine omens from their gods.
At the heart of this story is Sybil, otherwise known as ‘Six’, our protagonist. Her growth is slow and heart-stirring. She’s complicated, naive and a 'teacher’s pet' yet also loyal, compassionate and curious. I wasn’t her biggest fan at first, but she grew on me. What really pulled me in was the bond she had with the other five diviners, which was a loyal, fierce sisterhood.
What I found refreshing was that Sybil starts out physically strong and her character development is more around mental growth. No not like other girls/chosen one tropes. Just development that made me want to give her a hug.
Plus there’s also Rory, the foulest knight in all of the land. Or is he? Although he challenges Sybil's worldview, he also respects boundaries. He asks for consent and sews. Lots of green flags. I'd take a bet that Pedro Pascal would approve.
Now, it wasn't five star worthy although I really wanted it to be. I can't really put my finger on why, maybe it's a "me" problem. I wasn't quite as besotted with the main characters (gargoyle excluded obvs) and the magic system as I'd have liked to be perhaps. I think the magic system in One Dark Window/Two Twisted Crowns was also a lot more compelling for me, this one felt less impactful or something.
Additionally, I wanted more types of representation, as there wasn't much—no characters of colour—and a low key amount of queer rep. Nonetheless, I’m sure we’ll all welcome the age diversity in a major side character: Maude is 41 and she’s fleshed out satisfactorily.
Quibbles aside, this story hooked me. It’s drenched in dread and beauty, teeming with grief, longing and desire to be seen not for what you do, but for who you are and who you might be.
Personally, I’m most enthralled and endeared by the gargoyle and think he’s one of my favourite characters in fiction this year. I may have rated this less if it wasn't for him.
If you loved The Shepherd King duology, you’ll probably love this too. And even if you didn’t, this one might change your mind.
﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
Started one of my most anticipated books of 2025 and within the first chapter I can already tell that a fly-lecturing gargoyle who calls everyone Bartholomew is going to be my favourite character.
July 15, 2025
5 Stars ★
“You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don’t know what to call it, but I want it. I want you.”
I fell in love with Rachel Gilligs writing with The Shepherd King duology. I knew then that I would read anything that she wrote. She has done it again and entranced me with this masterpiece.
The Knight and the Moth is the first in the Stonewater Kingdom series. It's moody and gothic with a unique magic system with divination, quests, prophesies, and omens that hold depth. The writing was smooth and entrancing with the perfect pace and world-building that was painted so vividly that I was within it. Keeping me enthralled throughout.
Sybil Delling was taken as a foundling to Aisling Cathedral to become one of six diviners who don't have a name and are identified only by a number. She is to give ten years of her life to drown and dream of visions of the six figures known as Omens. People travel across Traum to the Cathedral on the Tor to see into their future. As she and her five sister diviners near the end of their ten-year service the king and his knights arrive at the Cathedral. Shortly after the diviners begin to vanish one by one until only Sybel is left. Now she has no choice but to seek the help of the the rude, mysterious knight she met when the king arrived, Rory Myndacious. She sets out into the world unknown to her beyond the Cathedral walls to find the gods and seek the truth behind her visions and the disappearance of her sisters.
Sylbil Delling love her so much. For years she was the perfect diviner always doing everything the abbess asked of her that is until her soul sisters began disappearing. We then get to see the true Sybil. My gosh, she is fierce, strong, smart, and caring. The fact that she set out on this journey not only into a world not known to her but also with people who are mostly strangers to her to find the other five diviners shows just how caring and strong she is. Let's talk about just how strong she is. She drowns in the spring for years and when she leaves Aisling she faces many obstacles and conquers every one of them proving herself to be. I just love her so much! One of my favorite things about her was her growth and acceptance of herself with who she became at Aisling ridding her shroud as that final piece. Letting go completely of who she once was "Six" and no longer allowing herself to be hidden from the world. The best was when she no longer hid from Rory and showed him her true self.
"I was losing my faith in everything. But the two of us meeting… it felt almost divine."
Rodrick "Rory" Myndacious I love him so much! At first, he comes off as this rude, broody, mysterious knight but his layers peel back ever so slowly and reveal his other softer sides. He truly is caring and a real gentleman. I mean come on the man always asks for permission and waits for that permission to be given before he attempts to touch Sybil in any way. Hell, it could be something as simple as a friendly gesture but I tell you it had me on my knees and swooning. His protectiveness over the ones that he cares for is the sweetest. And then we have the touch her and die vibes, ahhhh because yes give me all of that. I'm so down bad for him.
“You are more special than you realize. I don’t even know your name and I would do anything for you.”
Sybil and Rory the moments between them were some of the best. The banter that they exuded is top tier and oh the tension that was built up between them was utterly hot. Then you add in the way that they rile and challenge one another making their love unmatched. The trust they started to lean towards along with the pining, caring for one another, and let's not forget the longing made for the perfect slow romance. Not only was it slow but it was intentional as it started as a mutual wariness of one another and gradually piece by piece into a tender yet complicated relationship with so much emotion and need bringing them to the deepest connection they both need. Letting one another peel back their many built-up layers of pain and mistrust never pushing the other but being patient and waiting for them to be ready. Add the tension and banter right alongside it and we were left with a sizzling chemistry. It was just so good. I am a goner and am obsessed with them, your honor!
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Sybil Delling.”
Batholomew is one of my favorite characters in this. If asked what do you think the gargoyle would be like? He is not at all what I would have pictured. He was an absolute delight in this story. He's full of knowledge and has the right amount of sarcasm. Most of the things that he said or the advice he gave were not at the best times but he seriously had me laughing out loud almost every time he spoke. So hard that I had tears. He was a bit dramatic at times but he had so much love for Sybil and stood by her through it all, always there when she needed someone to be. I freaking love him so much. When I learned of his backstory it made me mad and sad all at once I just wanted to give him the biggest hug and hold him.
“When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”
The found family was aspiring. First, you have the diviners, Sybil's chosen sisters. They were such a tight-knit group of girls. I love that she had that sisterhood to lean on and they had her. Then we have the other group made up of Rory, Maude, and the king. They not only worked together but had one another's back with Maude being like the mother of the group. What I truly loved is that they took Sybil in when her sisters disappeared, especially Maude who was the motherly figure that she deserved. It was unique having two separate sets of found family and I was here for it.
The love that I have for this story is endless. This was perfection in my eyes. However, that ending was not what I was expecting entirely it left me shook and staring at the wall. I sat there wishing and still am that I didn't have to wait for the next book because how am I supposed to do that with how it ended? Do yourself a favor and read this if you haven't already.
*Spoilers may be mentioned*
Favorite quotes and moments
“My armor may dent, my sword may break, but I will never diminish.
"Histories are forged by those who benefit from them, and seldom those who live them."
“If you were to bite down, your bottom teeth would leave a crooked mark, unique as your fingerprint. That’s what I thought when we first spoke at Aisling. Outside the Diviners’ cottage. You smiled.”
“And you were imagining what pattern my teeth might leave on your skin?”
“I was in the throes of the idleweed. Out of my senses.”
“Mm-hmm. “Shall we see, then?
“Where would you bite me, knight?” “Wherever you told me to, Diviner.”
“I will carry them for you, Bartholomew. I will shoulder any weight you give me.”
“I cannot decide which I like best. The sunrise, or the sunset. They are like life, and her quiet companion, death.”
“To live again after death is strange magic, and an even stranger fate."
-----------------------
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Pre-read
This is one of my most anticipated reads! I'm ready to be immersed in another one of Rachel's worlds! Here we go! 🙂↕️💙
“You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don’t know what to call it, but I want it. I want you.”
I fell in love with Rachel Gilligs writing with The Shepherd King duology. I knew then that I would read anything that she wrote. She has done it again and entranced me with this masterpiece.
The Knight and the Moth is the first in the Stonewater Kingdom series. It's moody and gothic with a unique magic system with divination, quests, prophesies, and omens that hold depth. The writing was smooth and entrancing with the perfect pace and world-building that was painted so vividly that I was within it. Keeping me enthralled throughout.
Sybil Delling was taken as a foundling to Aisling Cathedral to become one of six diviners who don't have a name and are identified only by a number. She is to give ten years of her life to drown and dream of visions of the six figures known as Omens. People travel across Traum to the Cathedral on the Tor to see into their future. As she and her five sister diviners near the end of their ten-year service the king and his knights arrive at the Cathedral. Shortly after the diviners begin to vanish one by one until only Sybel is left. Now she has no choice but to seek the help of the the rude, mysterious knight she met when the king arrived, Rory Myndacious. She sets out into the world unknown to her beyond the Cathedral walls to find the gods and seek the truth behind her visions and the disappearance of her sisters.
Sylbil Delling love her so much. For years she was the perfect diviner always doing everything the abbess asked of her that is until her soul sisters began disappearing. We then get to see the true Sybil. My gosh, she is fierce, strong, smart, and caring. The fact that she set out on this journey not only into a world not known to her but also with people who are mostly strangers to her to find the other five diviners shows just how caring and strong she is. Let's talk about just how strong she is. She drowns in the spring for years and when she leaves Aisling she faces many obstacles and conquers every one of them proving herself to be. I just love her so much! One of my favorite things about her was her growth and acceptance of herself with who she became at Aisling ridding her shroud as that final piece. Letting go completely of who she once was "Six" and no longer allowing herself to be hidden from the world. The best was when she no longer hid from Rory and showed him her true self.
"I was losing my faith in everything. But the two of us meeting… it felt almost divine."
Rodrick "Rory" Myndacious I love him so much! At first, he comes off as this rude, broody, mysterious knight but his layers peel back ever so slowly and reveal his other softer sides. He truly is caring and a real gentleman. I mean come on the man always asks for permission and waits for that permission to be given before he attempts to touch Sybil in any way. Hell, it could be something as simple as a friendly gesture but I tell you it had me on my knees and swooning. His protectiveness over the ones that he cares for is the sweetest. And then we have the touch her and die vibes, ahhhh because yes give me all of that. I'm so down bad for him.
“You are more special than you realize. I don’t even know your name and I would do anything for you.”
Sybil and Rory the moments between them were some of the best. The banter that they exuded is top tier and oh the tension that was built up between them was utterly hot. Then you add in the way that they rile and challenge one another making their love unmatched. The trust they started to lean towards along with the pining, caring for one another, and let's not forget the longing made for the perfect slow romance. Not only was it slow but it was intentional as it started as a mutual wariness of one another and gradually piece by piece into a tender yet complicated relationship with so much emotion and need bringing them to the deepest connection they both need. Letting one another peel back their many built-up layers of pain and mistrust never pushing the other but being patient and waiting for them to be ready. Add the tension and banter right alongside it and we were left with a sizzling chemistry. It was just so good. I am a goner and am obsessed with them, your honor!
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Sybil Delling.”
Batholomew is one of my favorite characters in this. If asked what do you think the gargoyle would be like? He is not at all what I would have pictured. He was an absolute delight in this story. He's full of knowledge and has the right amount of sarcasm. Most of the things that he said or the advice he gave were not at the best times but he seriously had me laughing out loud almost every time he spoke. So hard that I had tears. He was a bit dramatic at times but he had so much love for Sybil and stood by her through it all, always there when she needed someone to be. I freaking love him so much. When I learned of his backstory it made me mad and sad all at once I just wanted to give him the biggest hug and hold him.
“When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”
The found family was aspiring. First, you have the diviners, Sybil's chosen sisters. They were such a tight-knit group of girls. I love that she had that sisterhood to lean on and they had her. Then we have the other group made up of Rory, Maude, and the king. They not only worked together but had one another's back with Maude being like the mother of the group. What I truly loved is that they took Sybil in when her sisters disappeared, especially Maude who was the motherly figure that she deserved. It was unique having two separate sets of found family and I was here for it.
The love that I have for this story is endless. This was perfection in my eyes. However, that ending was not what I was expecting entirely it left me shook and staring at the wall. I sat there wishing and still am that I didn't have to wait for the next book because how am I supposed to do that with how it ended? Do yourself a favor and read this if you haven't already.
*Spoilers may be mentioned*
Favorite quotes and moments
“My armor may dent, my sword may break, but I will never diminish.
"Histories are forged by those who benefit from them, and seldom those who live them."
“If you were to bite down, your bottom teeth would leave a crooked mark, unique as your fingerprint. That’s what I thought when we first spoke at Aisling. Outside the Diviners’ cottage. You smiled.”
“And you were imagining what pattern my teeth might leave on your skin?”
“I was in the throes of the idleweed. Out of my senses.”
“Mm-hmm. “Shall we see, then?
“Where would you bite me, knight?” “Wherever you told me to, Diviner.”
“I will carry them for you, Bartholomew. I will shoulder any weight you give me.”
“I cannot decide which I like best. The sunrise, or the sunset. They are like life, and her quiet companion, death.”
“To live again after death is strange magic, and an even stranger fate."
-----------------------
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Pre-read
This is one of my most anticipated reads! I'm ready to be immersed in another one of Rachel's worlds! Here we go! 🙂↕️💙
June 17, 2025
this was start to finish… so good, so creative, so loving, so imaginative … just UGH
GIVE ME THE SECOND BOOKS RIGHT NEOWWWW
GIVE ME THE SECOND BOOKS RIGHT NEOWWWW
May 25, 2025
4.5 stars
Rachel Gillig does it again! A unique magic system, the perfect amount of humor and banter, and a cliffhanger ending that has me feral for the next book. I loved this so much!
Rachel Gillig does it again! A unique magic system, the perfect amount of humor and banter, and a cliffhanger ending that has me feral for the next book. I loved this so much!
May 31, 2025
4.5 stars 🌟 rachel’s writing is so beautiful i will forever be in awe of how naturally the poetic and whimsical words flow from her pen, this was slow for me in parts (hence why it wasn’t quite 5 stars for me) HOWEVER this plot was so intriguing, the world was atmospheric, the belief & magic system was unique and the romance subplot was so fun. ALSO i will be calling everyone Bartholomew for the foreseeable 🙂↕️.
Want to read
July 10, 2025Let's see if her book is as iconic as her Instagram comment 🤭 if ykyk
June 2, 2025
4.75 Stars. Rounded up for Goodreads!
I am not going to tell you how to live your life, but it would be a HUGE misstep on your part to not read this book.
The Knight and the Moth is just further proof that Rachel Gillig is the actual queen of fantasy romance! I said what I said!
This setting felt like an old school fairytale! Not Disney fairytale like terrifying, whimsical, and what in the acid trip is going on fairy tale. Gillig gives us this smaller map, but hits us with HUGE world building! We get a rich history, an entire religion, and a magic system that you can actually believe!
This book gave me one of my new favorite characters OF ALL TIME! Best believe I will be getting a gargoyle tattoo and I feel like I need a forth child just so I can use the name Bartholomew.
I am not going to tell you how to live your life, but it would be a HUGE misstep on your part to not read this book.
The Knight and the Moth is just further proof that Rachel Gillig is the actual queen of fantasy romance! I said what I said!
This setting felt like an old school fairytale! Not Disney fairytale like terrifying, whimsical, and what in the acid trip is going on fairy tale. Gillig gives us this smaller map, but hits us with HUGE world building! We get a rich history, an entire religion, and a magic system that you can actually believe!
This book gave me one of my new favorite characters OF ALL TIME! Best believe I will be getting a gargoyle tattoo and I feel like I need a forth child just so I can use the name Bartholomew.
May 26, 2025
2.5 ☆
“I was losing my faith in everything. But the two of us meeting… it felt almost divine.”
i’m actually annoyed by how disappointing this was. i have never been so bored in my entire life, the plot was so horrendously paced. Sybil, the main character was as bland as her eye color and it’s a shame cause the side characters were eating her up at every turn. i actually loved Rory — he blushes, would do anything she asked of him and wears charcoal eyeliner.. i mean, COME ON. the gargoyle Bartholomew was my favorite character, his off handed jabs were so hilarious and i also really liked Maude. it’s partly my fault for not reading the synopsis, but im extremely picky/ not a fan of books that have religious undertones and the plot in here wasn’t doing the book any favors in my eyes.
“I have disdain in me, yes.” Rory’s brows drew together, lips parted slightly enough for me to hear the shaky sound of his exhale. “But none for you.”
i found so much of the story to be predictable and the reveal around the omens and the abess was beyond lackluster. the writing was doing too much and too little at the same time, why are we talking in circles instead of getting to the point? i swear, all of it was properly testing me. if i hadn’t already bought this, i most definitely would’ve dnf halfway through. i never once got invested or really cared about what the outcome would be. the more i think about the ending, the more it gets on my nerves. if Sybil had an ounce of personality, maybe it would’ve gotten a 3 star. but tbh, this actually made me start feeling slumpy.. so i seriously doubt it.
➥ thanks to my bestie Deepak for buddy reading this with me 🩶 the book was wack but at least all the reactions and comments were funny af lol
“I was losing my faith in everything. But the two of us meeting… it felt almost divine.”
i’m actually annoyed by how disappointing this was. i have never been so bored in my entire life, the plot was so horrendously paced. Sybil, the main character was as bland as her eye color and it’s a shame cause the side characters were eating her up at every turn. i actually loved Rory — he blushes, would do anything she asked of him and wears charcoal eyeliner.. i mean, COME ON. the gargoyle Bartholomew was my favorite character, his off handed jabs were so hilarious and i also really liked Maude. it’s partly my fault for not reading the synopsis, but im extremely picky/ not a fan of books that have religious undertones and the plot in here wasn’t doing the book any favors in my eyes.
“I have disdain in me, yes.” Rory’s brows drew together, lips parted slightly enough for me to hear the shaky sound of his exhale. “But none for you.”
i found so much of the story to be predictable and the reveal around the omens and the abess was beyond lackluster. the writing was doing too much and too little at the same time, why are we talking in circles instead of getting to the point? i swear, all of it was properly testing me. if i hadn’t already bought this, i most definitely would’ve dnf halfway through. i never once got invested or really cared about what the outcome would be. the more i think about the ending, the more it gets on my nerves. if Sybil had an ounce of personality, maybe it would’ve gotten a 3 star. but tbh, this actually made me start feeling slumpy.. so i seriously doubt it.
➥ thanks to my bestie Deepak for buddy reading this with me 🩶 the book was wack but at least all the reactions and comments were funny af lol
July 10, 2025
Bartholomew, I need the second book NEOOOOW
July 26, 2025
Oh. My. Gawd. Perfect. No notes.
I loved The Shepard King Duology and The Knight and the Moth is just as phenomenal! Rachel Gillig is an exceptional writer!
Some of my favorite things about this book…
- The gargoyle is so perfect
- surprisingly funny
- A+++ banter and tension
- wildly romantic
- Strong, sturdy, tall, and powerful FMC (who is also bisexual, although it’s only mentioned briefly!)
- broody MMC
- atmospheric setting
- unique magic system
- detailed world
- flawless pacing
- edge of your seat action
- POWERFUL ENDING!
I could honestly go on, and on, and on, this book was absolutely spectacular and one you will NOT want to miss.
A note for the cover haters, look - I didn’t love it at first either, but AFTER reading the book? THIS COVER IS F-ING EVERYTHING! When you start reading you’ll understand - it perfectly encapsulates the story!
5⭐️| TikTok | IG |
Thank you Orbit for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
I loved The Shepard King Duology and The Knight and the Moth is just as phenomenal! Rachel Gillig is an exceptional writer!
Some of my favorite things about this book…
- The gargoyle is so perfect
- surprisingly funny
- A+++ banter and tension
- wildly romantic
- Strong, sturdy, tall, and powerful FMC (who is also bisexual, although it’s only mentioned briefly!)
- broody MMC
- atmospheric setting
- unique magic system
- detailed world
- flawless pacing
- edge of your seat action
- POWERFUL ENDING!
I could honestly go on, and on, and on, this book was absolutely spectacular and one you will NOT want to miss.
A note for the cover haters, look - I didn’t love it at first either, but AFTER reading the book? THIS COVER IS F-ING EVERYTHING! When you start reading you’ll understand - it perfectly encapsulates the story!
5⭐️| TikTok | IG |
Thank you Orbit for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
June 19, 2025
I love a woman in chainmail and a witty, loveable side character. Reading this felt like falling into a strange, gothic dream.
July 19, 2025
ARC provided by Orbit - thank you so much
this is my first book by this author, so i was a little apprehensive, because i didn’t want to ruin her previous duology for me, but i think i can safely say that this was a unique reading experience all on its own. this story starts out inside a cathedral that is somewhat hidden away. and inside, are six women, who have been raised to become powerful diviners, who perform reading rituals. these six women know very little, if anything, of their pasts, and refer to each other by their allotted number. and this story truly does star six, who has the unfortunate luck to perform the next holy ritual for the boy king who has just arrived at the cathedral.
i really do not want to say much more than that, but i really loved this. it does have a lot of buzzwords for me, so i was pretty much foaming at the mouth during the first part of this book. I did think that maybe it dragged a little bit in the middle, during some very lovely traveling, but this really is close to a five star for me. the atmosphere was truly some of the best ive ever read, and i do not type that lightly. the imagery, from the omen, to the fighting, to just what our mc was seeing during her travels, was perfect. and the slow burn romance actually did really work for me, too! and what this book was saying, about abuse, and power dynamics, and manipulating people who already feel so very lost, it was all just very powerful (especially with the added religion element).
the power of reclaiming things is always so important to me, but this story for sure had a very powerful element of reclaiming one’s name that made me very emotional. and just the constant reminder that you don’t need to be useful to someone, or some machine, or any higher power, to be loved. you just being here is enough, and i will always remind you, dear review reader and friend, of that.
i really loved this and it is highly recommended by me, especially if you feel like we have similar tastes in books. and I recommend this extra if you, too, want to fall in love with a gargoyle (bartholomew, ilysm). also, i don’t know where else to type this, but our mc is pan or bi and we always will love to see it!
trigger + content warnings from the author: Violence/gore, Religious abuse: physical and psychological, Body horror, Adult language + profanity, Emesis, Sexual content, Death of magical creatures, Grief/loss
additional trigger + content warnings i found while reading: self harm to get blood for a ritual, drowning, unwanted touching (arm grab), battle, talk of illness, talk of loss of a loved one in past, kidnapping, murder, death, manipulation, drug use, talk of starvation, talk of captivity, one sentence mention of stillbirth in past
blog | instagram | youtube | wishlist | spotify | amazon
♡ buddy read with amy + penny
“I don’t even know your name and I would do anything for you”
this is my first book by this author, so i was a little apprehensive, because i didn’t want to ruin her previous duology for me, but i think i can safely say that this was a unique reading experience all on its own. this story starts out inside a cathedral that is somewhat hidden away. and inside, are six women, who have been raised to become powerful diviners, who perform reading rituals. these six women know very little, if anything, of their pasts, and refer to each other by their allotted number. and this story truly does star six, who has the unfortunate luck to perform the next holy ritual for the boy king who has just arrived at the cathedral.
i really do not want to say much more than that, but i really loved this. it does have a lot of buzzwords for me, so i was pretty much foaming at the mouth during the first part of this book. I did think that maybe it dragged a little bit in the middle, during some very lovely traveling, but this really is close to a five star for me. the atmosphere was truly some of the best ive ever read, and i do not type that lightly. the imagery, from the omen, to the fighting, to just what our mc was seeing during her travels, was perfect. and the slow burn romance actually did really work for me, too! and what this book was saying, about abuse, and power dynamics, and manipulating people who already feel so very lost, it was all just very powerful (especially with the added religion element).
the power of reclaiming things is always so important to me, but this story for sure had a very powerful element of reclaiming one’s name that made me very emotional. and just the constant reminder that you don’t need to be useful to someone, or some machine, or any higher power, to be loved. you just being here is enough, and i will always remind you, dear review reader and friend, of that.
i really loved this and it is highly recommended by me, especially if you feel like we have similar tastes in books. and I recommend this extra if you, too, want to fall in love with a gargoyle (bartholomew, ilysm). also, i don’t know where else to type this, but our mc is pan or bi and we always will love to see it!
trigger + content warnings from the author: Violence/gore, Religious abuse: physical and psychological, Body horror, Adult language + profanity, Emesis, Sexual content, Death of magical creatures, Grief/loss
additional trigger + content warnings i found while reading: self harm to get blood for a ritual, drowning, unwanted touching (arm grab), battle, talk of illness, talk of loss of a loved one in past, kidnapping, murder, death, manipulation, drug use, talk of starvation, talk of captivity, one sentence mention of stillbirth in past
blog | instagram | youtube | wishlist | spotify | amazon
♡ buddy read with amy + penny
June 14, 2025
જ⁀➴ 4.5 stars (rounded down to 4)
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐
Yeah, I just have one question for Rachel Gillig: when's the second book coming? Because how can you end a book like THAT and call it a day?! I'm just at a loss of words over how much I loved this book.
(P.S. Where can I get my own pet gargoyle?)
Full review to come!
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐
⋆˙⟡ 𝒫𝓇𝑒-𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 (5/26/2025): I just finished my 54th book, so now I'm on the final book that will complete my reading challenge goal this year! I wanted this to be my 55th book, so I'm super excited to read this! I hope it delivers because I've heard so many good things about it🩵🖤⚔️✨
⋆˙⟡ 𝒫𝓇𝑒-𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 (5/20/2025): Happy publishing day to The Knight and the Moth!🖤⚔️I hope everyone who wants to read it has a five-star read and if you're like me and you're still waiting for your copy to come in the mail, that it comes quickly and intact!✨
⋆˙⟡ 𝒫𝓇𝑒-𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 (5/18/2025): Happy publishing week to The Knight and the Moth!🩵🖤⚔️ I know a TON of people are excited for this to come out; I know I'm one of them! I'm quickly approaching my reading challenge goal of 55 books--I'm 4 books away!--and I wanted my 55th book to be something special, so I figured it would be this! I have my Barnes & Noble exclusive edition of the book on its way to me in the mail now, so I'm hoping it arrives on time for me to start it soon!
As always with super highly anticipated releases like this one--but with all books in general honestly--if I see a spoiler from anyone on my home feed, they're getting immediately blocked lol. (Yes, I did block people because there were Fearless spoilers all over my home feed when it came out.) It's not cool to spoil books before other people get a chance to read them. It costs NOTHING to put *SPOILERS* or use a spoiler tag in a reading update or a review. Be mindful and respectful of other readers because it's basic reader etiquette! :)
“My armor may dent, my sword may break, but I will never diminish.”
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐
Yeah, I just have one question for Rachel Gillig: when's the second book coming? Because how can you end a book like THAT and call it a day?! I'm just at a loss of words over how much I loved this book.
(P.S. Where can I get my own pet gargoyle?)
Full review to come!
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐
⋆˙⟡ 𝒫𝓇𝑒-𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 (5/26/2025): I just finished my 54th book, so now I'm on the final book that will complete my reading challenge goal this year! I wanted this to be my 55th book, so I'm super excited to read this! I hope it delivers because I've heard so many good things about it🩵🖤⚔️✨
⋆˙⟡ 𝒫𝓇𝑒-𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 (5/20/2025): Happy publishing day to The Knight and the Moth!🖤⚔️I hope everyone who wants to read it has a five-star read and if you're like me and you're still waiting for your copy to come in the mail, that it comes quickly and intact!✨
⋆˙⟡ 𝒫𝓇𝑒-𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 (5/18/2025): Happy publishing week to The Knight and the Moth!🩵🖤⚔️ I know a TON of people are excited for this to come out; I know I'm one of them! I'm quickly approaching my reading challenge goal of 55 books--I'm 4 books away!--and I wanted my 55th book to be something special, so I figured it would be this! I have my Barnes & Noble exclusive edition of the book on its way to me in the mail now, so I'm hoping it arrives on time for me to start it soon!
As always with super highly anticipated releases like this one--but with all books in general honestly--if I see a spoiler from anyone on my home feed, they're getting immediately blocked lol. (Yes, I did block people because there were Fearless spoilers all over my home feed when it came out.) It's not cool to spoil books before other people get a chance to read them. It costs NOTHING to put *SPOILERS* or use a spoiler tag in a reading update or a review. Be mindful and respectful of other readers because it's basic reader etiquette! :)
May 21, 2025
✩ 4 stars ✩
What to Expect:
➼ Complex World Building
➼ Unique Magic System
➼ Slow Burn
➼ Found Family
➼ Funny Gargoyle
➼ Broody MMC
➼ Medieval Setting
➼ Gothic Fantasy
➼ Divination
➼ Cliffhanger
➼ Narrated by Samantha Hydeson
➼ First Person POV
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this one because it was very difficult for me to immerse myself in the story. I listened to the first 15% three times through before I felt like I had a handle on what was going on, and when I finished the book, I started over at the beginning and listened to the entire thing again. 😅 I have NEVER done this before, and I’m not someone who usually struggles with focus or comprehension, so this phenomenon needs to be noted.
The first time I listened, this was a 3 star read for me that I frankly could have DNF’d at any time without remorse. The second time around, I felt much more connected to the characters and the story, and could better picture the setting which allowed me to have a much better reading experience.
The story, world building and magic system did feel very unique to me, which is a good thing, but I think that was part of the reason I struggled. I just couldn’t connect any of the characters or events to anything I had read about or seen before. It took me a while to catch the author’s vision, but now that I’ve made it through twice, I am starting to understand the hype (although I do think it may be somewhat overstated).
One thing I absolutely loved about this book was the characters. The MC’s and the Gargoyle in particular I think will be almost universally beloved by readers. The FMC I would describe as both soft and strong. She is the kind of FMC whose head you won’t mind being in. The MMC is broody and confrontational at first, but underneath his hard exterior is a man who would do anything to protect and defend our FMC. He has several swoon worthy moments that romance readers will absolutely adore. You will love both MC’s, but not nearly as much as you will love the funny and lovable Gargoyle. He has a very literal mind and he had tons of hilarious lines throughout the book as he struggles to use and interpret idioms. 😆
Despite my initial difficulties with this book, I think this is probably Rachel’s best book yet. The cliffhanger ending took me completely by surprise and now I’ll have to wait for book two to find out what happens next. 😩 Maybe I should go ahead and write down some cliff notes for myself, so I don’t have to read this a third time when the next book is released. 🙃
Thank you to Libro.FM for the ALC in exchange for an honest review.
✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼
Pre-read: Here we go!
Libro.fm came through with the ALC! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼
This is so many people’s most anticipated read of the year but I find this cover so off putting…
There’s so much going on, and why the combover? 😅
≪ ◦ ❖ ◦ ≫
Connect with me on Instagram
What to Expect:
➼ Complex World Building
➼ Unique Magic System
➼ Slow Burn
➼ Found Family
➼ Funny Gargoyle
➼ Broody MMC
➼ Medieval Setting
➼ Gothic Fantasy
➼ Divination
➼ Cliffhanger
➼ Narrated by Samantha Hydeson
➼ First Person POV
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this one because it was very difficult for me to immerse myself in the story. I listened to the first 15% three times through before I felt like I had a handle on what was going on, and when I finished the book, I started over at the beginning and listened to the entire thing again. 😅 I have NEVER done this before, and I’m not someone who usually struggles with focus or comprehension, so this phenomenon needs to be noted.
The first time I listened, this was a 3 star read for me that I frankly could have DNF’d at any time without remorse. The second time around, I felt much more connected to the characters and the story, and could better picture the setting which allowed me to have a much better reading experience.
The story, world building and magic system did feel very unique to me, which is a good thing, but I think that was part of the reason I struggled. I just couldn’t connect any of the characters or events to anything I had read about or seen before. It took me a while to catch the author’s vision, but now that I’ve made it through twice, I am starting to understand the hype (although I do think it may be somewhat overstated).
One thing I absolutely loved about this book was the characters. The MC’s and the Gargoyle in particular I think will be almost universally beloved by readers. The FMC I would describe as both soft and strong. She is the kind of FMC whose head you won’t mind being in. The MMC is broody and confrontational at first, but underneath his hard exterior is a man who would do anything to protect and defend our FMC. He has several swoon worthy moments that romance readers will absolutely adore. You will love both MC’s, but not nearly as much as you will love the funny and lovable Gargoyle. He has a very literal mind and he had tons of hilarious lines throughout the book as he struggles to use and interpret idioms. 😆
Despite my initial difficulties with this book, I think this is probably Rachel’s best book yet. The cliffhanger ending took me completely by surprise and now I’ll have to wait for book two to find out what happens next. 😩 Maybe I should go ahead and write down some cliff notes for myself, so I don’t have to read this a third time when the next book is released. 🙃
Thank you to Libro.FM for the ALC in exchange for an honest review.
✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼
Pre-read: Here we go!
Libro.fm came through with the ALC! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼
This is so many people’s most anticipated read of the year but I find this cover so off putting…
There’s so much going on, and why the combover? 😅
≪ ◦ ❖ ◦ ≫
Connect with me on Instagram
June 18, 2025
A moody, gothic, slow‑burn romantasy that clings to your bones and reminds you why you fell in love with fantasy in the first place.
🖤 A world whispered in shadows. From the damp hush of Aisling Cathedral to the mist‑cloaked moors, Gillig crafts an atmosphere in which every stone feels sentient, every echo seems sacred—or sacrilege. Cathedrals become characters, and spring‑fed drowning pools aren’t just spooky—they’re gospel.
🦋 Sybil “Six”: reluctant prophet, fierce sister. Starting off timid, she blossoms slowly—like a moonlit flower—into someone fierce, curious, flawed, and achingly human. Her mental growth hits harder than any sword arc. You’ll want to hug her and RIP the blindfold from her eyes.
🗡️ Rory, the knight who breaks and rebuilds you. He’s the kind of broody, sarcastic knight you didn’t know you needed—consent‑asking, boundary‑respecting, gentle yet guarded. Their banter is electric. The chemistry isn’t sparkly—it’s slow, simmering, genuine. Love that sneaks up, claws up, won’t be ignored. Honestly, emotional connection > spicy scenes any day.
🗿 Bartholomew = Bestie material. A gargoyle with a dry wit that lacerates your funny bone, and heartbreak too deep to ignore. He’s tragedy and comic relief all wrapped in stone wings. Honestly? He stole my heart. I laughed, I cried, I need a plushie immediately.
Highlights:
Gothic cathedral rituals = full creep‑vibe ✨
Bonds between the six Diviners = Sisterhood? More like soul‑sisters.
Slow‑burn romance done right—no insta‑love, all earned tension.
Prophecies, omens, gargoyle‑guardians—it reads like myth dipped in dread.
Minor gripes:
The magic system? A bit murky. I craved something more cohesive.
⚔️ Final thoughts:
It’ll drown you in darkness, trap you in its ritualistic world, and leave you aching for more. Not flawless—but wild, haunting, romantic. Truly, heart‑soul‑bite‑you material.
Side note: if you don’t fall for Bartholomew, I’m not sure we can be friends.
━━━━━━━━━━━⊱♡⊰━━━━━━━━━━
🕯 𝒑𝒓𝒆-𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅 🦋
a prophecy she can’t see. a knight she shouldn’t trust. and a destiny she never asked for?
yeah… i’m in. fully.
this book sounds like gothic romantasy crack ngl.
cathedrals cloaked in mist, vanishing girls, gods with secrets, and a knight who’s hot, rude, and definitely hiding something??
please. this is what i was made for.
🕯️ enemies-to-lovers tension??
🦋 reluctant quest vibes??
🕯️ slow-burn in candlelit chaos??
🦋 found family with magical trauma bonding??
yeah okay this is about to be so personal.
i’m expecting haunting prose, a morally gray heretic, and one emotionally devastated prophetess fighting the fate she didn’t ask for. and if it ruins me? good.
🖤 A world whispered in shadows. From the damp hush of Aisling Cathedral to the mist‑cloaked moors, Gillig crafts an atmosphere in which every stone feels sentient, every echo seems sacred—or sacrilege. Cathedrals become characters, and spring‑fed drowning pools aren’t just spooky—they’re gospel.
🦋 Sybil “Six”: reluctant prophet, fierce sister. Starting off timid, she blossoms slowly—like a moonlit flower—into someone fierce, curious, flawed, and achingly human. Her mental growth hits harder than any sword arc. You’ll want to hug her and RIP the blindfold from her eyes.
🗡️ Rory, the knight who breaks and rebuilds you. He’s the kind of broody, sarcastic knight you didn’t know you needed—consent‑asking, boundary‑respecting, gentle yet guarded. Their banter is electric. The chemistry isn’t sparkly—it’s slow, simmering, genuine. Love that sneaks up, claws up, won’t be ignored. Honestly, emotional connection > spicy scenes any day.
🗿 Bartholomew = Bestie material. A gargoyle with a dry wit that lacerates your funny bone, and heartbreak too deep to ignore. He’s tragedy and comic relief all wrapped in stone wings. Honestly? He stole my heart. I laughed, I cried, I need a plushie immediately.
Highlights:
Gothic cathedral rituals = full creep‑vibe ✨
Bonds between the six Diviners = Sisterhood? More like soul‑sisters.
Slow‑burn romance done right—no insta‑love, all earned tension.
Prophecies, omens, gargoyle‑guardians—it reads like myth dipped in dread.
Minor gripes:
The magic system? A bit murky. I craved something more cohesive.
⚔️ Final thoughts:
It’ll drown you in darkness, trap you in its ritualistic world, and leave you aching for more. Not flawless—but wild, haunting, romantic. Truly, heart‑soul‑bite‑you material.
Side note: if you don’t fall for Bartholomew, I’m not sure we can be friends.
━━━━━━━━━━━⊱♡⊰━━━━━━━━━━
🕯 𝒑𝒓𝒆-𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅 🦋
a prophecy she can’t see. a knight she shouldn’t trust. and a destiny she never asked for?
yeah… i’m in. fully.
this book sounds like gothic romantasy crack ngl.
cathedrals cloaked in mist, vanishing girls, gods with secrets, and a knight who’s hot, rude, and definitely hiding something??
please. this is what i was made for.
🕯️ enemies-to-lovers tension??
🦋 reluctant quest vibes??
🕯️ slow-burn in candlelit chaos??
🦋 found family with magical trauma bonding??
yeah okay this is about to be so personal.
i’m expecting haunting prose, a morally gray heretic, and one emotionally devastated prophetess fighting the fate she didn’t ask for. and if it ruins me? good.
May 21, 2025
HAPPY RELEASE DAY!!
3 stars - this review contains no spoilers!!
↳ the knight and the moth follows Six (Sybil Delling), rodrick (rory) myndacious, benji castor III, maude, and a gargoyle on their journey of killing the six deadly Omens.
⚔️ rodrick myndacious ᝰ.ᐟ i’m ngl, everytime someone called the mmc rodrick, i would picture rodrick heffley (the cartoon version) and cringe myself out. but that’s definitely a me problem 🖐🏻😭. anyways, he was really cute 🤭. this man treated her like the most precious thing in the world and his world revolved around her and her only.
🥹🥹🥹
🧥 sybil delling ᝰ.ᐟ sybil starts out as one of the six Diviners, but once her five sisters mysteriously disappear, she goes outside of the Aisling Cathedral (where they're kept) and discovers the truth about her abbess, the Omens, and the history of the whole kingdom. i admired her strength and perseverance throughout the book. i loved how she proved to us that she was brave & smart, not just telling us that. i'm very picky about my fmc's, but thankfully she won me over 🙂↕️💘.
🪨 the gargoyle ᝰ.ᐟ aka my favorite character. MY HEART. ughhh, he was the cutest, i just want to give him the biggest hug ever and jump into adventures together🤧 . his little phrases that he would say to sybil to encourage her 😭😭. I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE. when he started crying, i started crying.
some problems i had that didn’t make this 4 or 5 stars
➪ the first 60% of the book was extremely boring
➪ i didn’t fully understand the magic system (which may be my issue, but i couldn’t fully grasp how the Omens & kingdom worked)
➪ insta love ☹️
➪ the plot twist was kinda predictable…
➪ some typos (for example, one time “Beji” was mistaken for “Benji”)
⚜️ overall ᝰ.ᐟ , i do recommend this book for romantasy lovers!! although it had some confusing moments, it was still a solid story and rachel’s writing is amazing. should you be expecting the most compelling storyline? no. a jaw-dropping plot twist? no. but amazing characters & a forward-driving story? yes.
thank you to edelweiss for the ARC in exchange for an honest review
3 stars - this review contains no spoilers!!
↳ the knight and the moth follows Six (Sybil Delling), rodrick (rory) myndacious, benji castor III, maude, and a gargoyle on their journey of killing the six deadly Omens.
⚔️ rodrick myndacious ᝰ.ᐟ i’m ngl, everytime someone called the mmc rodrick, i would picture rodrick heffley (the cartoon version) and cringe myself out. but that’s definitely a me problem 🖐🏻😭. anyways, he was really cute 🤭. this man treated her like the most precious thing in the world and his world revolved around her and her only.
”next to him rode rory. only he wasn’t looking out at the view. he was looking at me taking it all in.”
🥹🥹🥹🧥 sybil delling ᝰ.ᐟ sybil starts out as one of the six Diviners, but once her five sisters mysteriously disappear, she goes outside of the Aisling Cathedral (where they're kept) and discovers the truth about her abbess, the Omens, and the history of the whole kingdom. i admired her strength and perseverance throughout the book. i loved how she proved to us that she was brave & smart, not just telling us that. i'm very picky about my fmc's, but thankfully she won me over 🙂↕️💘.
🪨 the gargoyle ᝰ.ᐟ aka my favorite character. MY HEART. ughhh, he was the cutest, i just want to give him the biggest hug ever and jump into adventures together🤧 . his little phrases that he would say to sybil to encourage her 😭😭. I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE. when he started crying, i started crying.
some problems i had that didn’t make this 4 or 5 stars
➪ the first 60% of the book was extremely boring
➪ i didn’t fully understand the magic system (which may be my issue, but i couldn’t fully grasp how the Omens & kingdom worked)
➪ insta love ☹️
➪ the plot twist was kinda predictable…
➪ some typos (for example, one time “Beji” was mistaken for “Benji”)
⚜️ overall ᝰ.ᐟ , i do recommend this book for romantasy lovers!! although it had some confusing moments, it was still a solid story and rachel’s writing is amazing. should you be expecting the most compelling storyline? no. a jaw-dropping plot twist? no. but amazing characters & a forward-driving story? yes.
thank you to edelweiss for the ARC in exchange for an honest review
June 16, 2025
a f**king masterpiece. I’m tempted to give it 6 stars, if only I didn’t think I’d need to reserve that rating for the second book when it comes out. if I thought I was down bad for Rachel Gillig’s writing after the shepherd king duology, I knew NOTHINGGGG OF WHAT SHE WAS CAPABLE OF UNTIL THIS ONE!!!!!!!!! UGH!
this story is defined by it’s genuinely stellar banter, a heart-wrenchingly tender love story, a *perfectly* paced plot, and unbeatable character arcs. the nuances on faith, fealty, power and politics too??? ms. gillig did in fact eat this the f**k up and didn’t leave a single crumb behind.
stabbing me in the chest would’ve been less painful than that ending <3
this story is defined by it’s genuinely stellar banter, a heart-wrenchingly tender love story, a *perfectly* paced plot, and unbeatable character arcs. the nuances on faith, fealty, power and politics too??? ms. gillig did in fact eat this the f**k up and didn’t leave a single crumb behind.
stabbing me in the chest would’ve been less painful than that ending <3
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