The Knight and the Moth
The Stonewater Kingdom series, Book 1
Rachel Gillig
Orbit
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Romance
Themes: Cross-Genre, Dreams, Faeries and Kin, Girl Power, Religious Themes
****
Description
The young woman known as Six remembers nothing before she first drowned in the sacred spring of
Aisling cathedral as a sickly foundling child. Now, as one of the sacred diviners, she and her five
holy sisters dream prophetic visions of the Omens and their sacred stone objects for the paying
faithful of Stonewater Kingdom, a small realm of five hamlets surrounded by hostile inhuman sprites.
Only the Omens hold the monsters at bay and give the people hope, and only the diviners, drowning
in the spring, can glimpse their will.
Or so Six always believed.
As they near their tenth year of service, the girls look forward to the freedom to come; each
diviner only serves a decade before being released. They have only had passing glimpsese of the
greater kingdom, but dream of great adventures and grand lives... until, one by one, they begin to
disappear in the night. At last, only Six remains - and she cannot believe the abbess when the
woman insists that the others just "ran away" without telling her. She flees, finding her way to
the only ally she might have: Roderick "Rory" Myndacious, one of the young new king's most trusted
guardsmen, who made quite an impression when he visited the cathedral with King Benjamin as part
of the coronation rituals. Rory is brash, rude, and blasphemous - the perfect companion, in other
words, when her enemies are the gods themselves.
Review
I've heard nothing but praise for Gillig and her books, and heard some intriguing things about
this one, so I figured I'd give it a try. The opening pulled me in almost immediately, as a
talking gargoyle lectures a bug caught in a spider web about morality in lieu of helping it free,
and the whole concept of repeatedly drowning in a sacred spring to receive prophetic visions. This
was a world I wanted to know more about, and the characters promised to be ones I'd enjoy
exploring that world with. (The edition I got was also admittedly quite petty, a paperback with
decorative page edges.) Unfortunately, as the tale unraveled, that promise frayed to bare threads,
until the only reason I was turning pages was to get the thing over with.
The early parts at Aisling, the cathedral built upon the sacred spring where once the Omens came
to unite the infighting humans against the many strange and deadly sprite creatures stalking the
land that would become Stonewater Kingdom, were rather interesting. Six and her companions are,
naturally, sheltered, convinced that their sacrifices are worthwhile and that they will be
rewarded for their service, but they are not so strictly naïve (in some ways, at least) as to be
insufferable; a few have been known to sneak out to the local fair now and again, and they aren't
forbidden to "lie in the grass" with visitors so long as they're discreet. Six herself strives to
be the perfect dreamer, the teacher's pet of the bunch, yet still feels very close to her sister
diviners, as they spend their evenings concocting grandiose dreams of their adventures once
they're free of the robes and the eye-covering shrouds they must wear day and night as part of
their service. The meeting with Rory and young King Benjamin foreshadows troubling times ahead,
and Six begins to consider questions and ideas she'd previously dismissed. There's a nice sense
of growing horror as, one by one, her fellow diviners begin to disappear... and those remaining
see a darker, colder side to their mother figure priestess, as she dismisses Six's concerns and
withdraws even the minimal affection and love she ever showed them, until there's no choice but
to flee - taking along the one talking gargoyle, which has several eccentricities but is
unflinchingly loyal.
At this point, I was quite enjoying the ride, even if the writing itself felt weirdly dissonant.
Descriptive passages could be quite poetic and distinct, while the dialogue was often casual and
very modern sounding, even allowing for "translation convention" (the unspoken understanding that
fantasy worlds are being "translated" by the author from whatever the native tongue is into an
Earth language). And if the greater world and mythology beyond Aisling felt weirdly flat and
thin, and if the gargoyle felt a little more like the sort of quirky "animal" companion that
would mostly exist to sell merchandising if this were a movie than a character with anything
like a pivotal role in the plot, well, it was early yet. Surely such things would be fleshed out
along the way.
As one might surmise from the rating, such things were not satisfactorily fleshed out.
After a relatively strong start and her gutsy, heart-rending decision to flee the only home and
"mother" she's ever known, Six too often reverts to being a passive follower in the wake of Rory,
Benji, and Benji's chief knight Maude in their greater mission, which involves challenging the
Omens themselves; Benji insists that he has proof that they're not the gods they claim to be,
merely usurpers to power who have manipulated the whole of the kingdom, and his first act as
king will be to end them and take the powerful stone artifacts they carry. Despite her dreams
and service, Six is soon convinced that the Omens are much less holy and benevolent than she
was raised to believe, but still, she feels weirdly passive much of the time, almost childlike
(she has a weird quirk where she refuses to wear shoes, and I don't consider it a spoiler to
say that, no, all the page count spent on her rejecting footwear never does lead to any greater
plot point; she's just acting like one of those willful toddlers who just won't keep their
shoes on, even in locations where shoes would be advisable). She's supposed to be rather
strong, having worked with stone on the crumbling cathedral (all the girls were encouraged to
have skills or hobbies), but acts quite weak many times. Rory's attraction does not quite feel
organic. And, despite some nice descriptions, I never really got a sense of a full world or
kingdom; the hamlets are full of flattened caricatures of extras (and the fact that they're
hamlets at all, not even towns, makes the whole of Stonewater feel weirdly small - with no
mention that I recall of a greater world beyond its boundaries), the sprites are just sort of
there without rhyme or reason (save serving as an occasional threat; there's lip service
given to how they're actually victims in a way, starving to death and becoming more
aggressive, but they're only rarely shown to be a tangible threat, attacking at
plot-convenient times and in plot-convenient ways). The gargoyle remains weirdly extraneous,
comic relief that does something useful once in a blue moon, and only at the very end is any
greater purpose given to it... too little, too late for me to really connect with it. By the
end, I just wasn't buying the story or the twists like I should have were I properly invested
in the tale, and the climax was just a massive brick dropped on everything, landing with a
dull thud that obliterated anything like interest in continuing as it set up a very contrived
complication.
In any event, I suppose I can place part of the blame for my disappointment on myself, for
taking to heart all the hype I've heard. I suppose it just is not the right story for me, but
it's nice that some people are evidently enjoying it. I shall be passing my copy on, in the
hopes that it finds a more appreciative reader.