REVIEW: The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig

The Knight and the Moth, the latest dark fantasy from Rachel Gillig, has been everywhere I look on bookish social media for months. It has a beautiful and intriguing cover, and my interest was certainly piqued. However, this wasn’t my first experience reading Gillig. I have previously read her debut novel, One Dark Window, and although I thought it was okay overall, that read didn’t blow me away, and the sequel never seems to make its way up my to-be-read pile. So, it was with some trepidation that I picked up The Knight and the Moth; everyone else loves this, would I love it too?

Six, one of six diviners resident at Aisling Cathedral, can’t remember much of her life from before. Only her name, Sybill Delling. She’s spent nearly ten years drowning and dreaming to learn the fates of the people who pilgrimaged across the kingdom of Traum to visit the cathedral. Her service is nearly at an end, and she and her fellow diviners (One through Five) start to imagine what is next for them. The arrival of the new young king to Aisling also brings a mysterious knight. Roderick Myndacious is boorish, brash, and beautiful, with no reverence for the diviners or respect for their dreams. Sybill hopes his visit will be swift without cause for him to return. But when her fellow diviners start to vanish one by one, she finds herself with nowhere else to turn but to the new king and his dark knight.

I found The Knight and the Moth an easy world to settle into. Traum is a faux medieval realm, and I had no difficulty imagining this setting. This might, however, be helped by the fact that I’ve lived near two spectacular cathedrals at various times in my life, so the initial location of Aisling Cathedral was essentially a mix of the two of them, and it felt familiar from the get-go. Gillig’s writing is easy to follow, and I enjoyed the fairly dark magic system, religious lore, and questing knights aspects of the story.

However, some elements of The Knight and the Moth didn’t work well for me at all. I don’t mind romance in my fantasy as a subplot, but not only were the romance elements here a fair chunk of the story, but they were also quite predictable. Oh look, the female main character takes an instant dislike to the tall and brooding, eyeliner-wearing knight. I wonder if these frenemies will eventually become lovers? And despite the dark beginnings of the novel, as Six / Sybill and the knights move away from the gothic setting of the imposing cathedral and its drowning pool, the novel sort of stops feeling like a dark fantasy. Which is also fine, I don’t mind an epic fantasy. I love a quest. But I thought I was reading a gothic dark fantasy, and now it’s a quest that I haven’t wholly bought into. I must admit, I spent much of The Knight and the Moth feeling ambivalent about everything. My socks were not being knocked off the way everyone else’s seemed to be.

Two things saved this book for me. The first is the talking gargoyle, who calls everyone Bartholomew. Yes, I know what that sounds like. I like animal companions in books, and the gargoyle falls into that category. He provides comic relief with his mixed metaphors and was so endearing that I kept reading to find out if he served some greater purpose other than stoney sidekick. The second thing was the plot twists in the last quarter of the novel. After spending most of my time reading The Knight and the Moth, feeling like everything was progressing as predictably as a quest should, these twists were a literary slap to the face. I thought I was all set to get everything neatly tied up, and then there was a sharp bend away from the conclusion I expected. Despite the rest of the novel, it’s made me want to read what happens next out of sheer curiosity.

I’m sure many people out there will adore The Knight and the Moth. Heck, even in the GdM team, there are some people who really enjoyed it and have sung its praises. But for me, it felt only okay for most of the time I was reading it. I’m not quite sure if an ending that took me by surprise and an endearing gargoyle are enough to tip it over into being a good read, which is a shame, but maybe goes to show that I shouldn’t always believe the bookish social media hype. Thank you to the team at Orbit for providing me with a copy of the novel.

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