The Knight And The Moth by Rachel Gillig is the first book in The Stonewater Kingdom duology.
The book starts off strong and interesting. I immediately liked the writing and the premise of the book. I was surprised how quickly I was drawn into the world of Traum, the mythology of the Omens and the Diviners, and the cryptic activities at Aisling Cathedral. Maidens, who keep their eyes shrouded even from themselves, are raised in a secluded environment since they were brought into the cathedral world as foundlings. They are placed in a magical pool of water and made to taste the blood of visitors. When they are lowered into the magical pool, they are drowned in order to see visions and prophecies of the future.
And there are living gargoyles in Aisling Cathedral that serve the abbess and interact with the Diviners and the guests. They are part of the sprites of this mythical world.
Great start to a story.
A very young King Castor arrives at Aisling Cathedral wanting to have his future divined.
Number Six, as she is called, the Diviner the story follows throughout, does the King’s divining and all the Omens for him are bad but it doesn’t seem to bother the King, or his retinue of knights.
One knight in particular, the handsome, defiant and off-putting Rodrick (Rory) Myndacious smirks, scoffs and even leaves the drowning event before it can be completed.
The Diviners are drowned but do not actually die.
Despite Rory’s atrocious behavior, Six finds herself uneasily drawn to him. It doesn’t matter that he is later discovered by Six blaspheming the Cathedral by drinking stolen waters of Aisling.
Still, she can’t help being attracted to him, frustratingly attracted to him.
After the King and his retinue leave the cathedral, something peculiar and unsettling starts to happen at Aisling Cathedral.
The Diviners, who consider themselves to be sisters of a sort, having promised to stay together forever when their time at the cathedral ends, which is scheduled to happen soon, begin to disappear. One by one, they vanish in the night while sleeping.
The abbess says they must have run away, and she sends one gargoyle in search of each.
The disappearances continue until Six is all alone.
Six decides to go on a quest of her own to locate the other diviners, and with her batlike gargoyle in tow, the one who calls her Bartholomew, she ventures forward into a world she doesn’t know full of dangerous sprites, some that live in the trees, some that live in water, and some the size of small hills. Some are trees.
Six and the gargoyle fall in with the King’s company, with Rory and with the first knight, Maude.
Six soon discovers what the King and his retinue are really about and what they are really after. And she learns why they came to Aisling Cathedral for divination and why they weren’t bothered by the bad Omens.
They are out to kill the Omens and destroy the power Aisling Cathedral has over the kingdom.
Six has entered a mind-altering new world as she discovers that much of what she was raised on and believed all her life was a lie.
The Knight and the Moth is a great book to a point. It is a step above YA and it isn’t overly cringey with the romanticism like many other romance novels. The heat between the characters takes a long time to intensify which is common for this genre.
I think when Rory fits Six for armor there was some interesting tension between them. Still, he doesn’t behave as indecently as one would expect an indecent knight to behave.
The characters, from my point of view, aren’t particularly deep emotionally. I didn’t feel connected to them or feel their lives were ever really in jeopardy which took something away from the action scenes. The ending, however, is a good twist that changed that.
I know it’s part of this genre to have innocents like Six behaving so cavalier and bold when they are in life and death situations, sneering and protesting against those with more knowledge and strength trying to protect them. Still, they get into hostile altercations against otherworldly powers and always find a way to comport themselves pretty well without any practical training.
The Knight and the Moth has a lot of elements of high fantasy making for a good story. And as I have said, the book starts out very strong. The story also ends with strength and some tugging drama.
I think once Six got out in the real world, and went after the Omens, things weren’t quite as powerful as they had been. More things happen to her in the real world beyond Aisling Cathedral, of course, and plenty of information hidden from her is revealed. But the real mystery and engaging drama of those powerful opening chapters was not recaptured, not until the very end. And the ending was powerful enough to make me want to read the next book.
The world and the story seemed to get too big for the author in the middle in my estimation.
The author had the intensity and secrecy of Aisling Cathedral locked down. Powerful. The rest of the world, not so much.
This book probably would have been five stars had the author been able to maintain that dramatic focus throughout the entire story. I think anyone who reads those opening chapters for themselves and reads until the end will see what I mean. 4 stars.
You can see some of my other book reviews below.

Allen M Werner is the author of the epic dark fantasy tale The Crystal Crux Series and the Greek mythology novellas, The Shades of Myth series.