Rachel Gillig’s The Knight and the Moth is the most crisp, well-structured ‘romantasy’ book I’ve read this year, while its characters and voice both adhere to and expand the intersection between whimsy and relatability of the genre.
Sybil’s story is sectioned in a balanced way where I felt like I was able to learn the dynamics of the tor, Aisling, and the function of faith in society before we head into a quest for magical items, the dismantling of lifelong beliefs, love, loss, and betrayal.
The book is framed with a storyteller, addressing “Bartholomew,” which I speculate is the gargoyle, who addresses everything by Bartholomew. The gargoyle is a vivid character, incredibly life-like with his wisdom, humor, and emotions, yet quirky like a being locked in a single place and belief system for decades. The gargoyle cares, mourns, and expresses himself deeply; he complains about assignments, being mistaken for birds, doing all the saving (which he always does, just in time)—all of which makes him feel like a best-friend.
I’m curious to see how this line in the opening framing section continues to play into the next book to be published in the fall of 2026, redefining reality, plot events, and moments of faith and divinity.
“To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?”
One of the most touching moments in the book is when we learn the gargoyle’s story. How he was the first foundling of Aisling, the first Diviner. How Bartholomew was the name he forgot when the Abbess turned him into a gargoyle when he began to question her. The name he called every foundling, every Diviner, while he lost and replaced them all every decade.
Bartholomew is the only male Diviner, after which the Abbess decides girls are more obedient, more malleable, as told by the following poignant quotes:
“She said that girls bear the pain of drowning better, and that sick ones always wake strange, special. And new.”
As a foundling girl who awakes strange, special, new, and entirely void of her past sense of self, Sybil’s story becomes a striking portrait of what it means to be a people-pleaser, the archetype of the most obedient, the most perfect, to lose yourself in the desires of others.
“I hated dreaming,” I said. “I hated it so much I decided I’d be perfect at it so that no one ever knew.”
She faced me. “Why do we do these things to ourselves?”
“The answer is rather simple.” The gargoyle swatted birch branches as we passed them by. “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.”
Until she meets the most ignoble knight of all the tor and begins to lose her fellow Diviners, she seeks the Abbess’ love, the holiness of her shroud and all she has come to believe. She daydreams with the women about the end of the decade of service they’ll never reach; she works away at stone with her chisel; she drowns, and she is never taught to swim.
“To let my shoulders sink beneath the burden of my yeses was the only way I understood my own merit.”
Sybil has forgotten her name, her memories, a purpose beyond her service to the Abbess—and to search for those pieces of herself at all. Yet, along her journey with Rory, Maude, Benji, and the gargoyle, she starts to piece herself back together. She says no to Benji’s sudden meeting. She tries on her first set of armor. She releases her shroud into the wind. She comes to terms with the scars of her drowning, her stone eyes (a mirror of the horrors of the world she leaves behind), and experiences a love that finds beauty in them.
“I tried to be good. To be a perfect Diviner and do everything the abbess told me to. I never complained, never said no. My worth was written by the rules I followed. But then the abbess called me resentful—a martyr. And maybe I am. But didn’t I become that way because her love cost as much.”
All of these quotes are what I found most powerful about the book, beyond its whirlwind yet steady and safe romance, its friendships, adventures, and surprising final betrayal. While I enjoyed all the book’s classic elements of ‘romantasy,’ what will walk with me is Sybil’s story of overcoming the lies she was told, deconstructing her misplaced belief, and rebuilding the sense of self she lost beneath the ‘burden of her yeses.’
April 14, 2026. All quotes from “The Knight and the Moth” by Rachel Gillig.
Autumn Rose Bellan 