Synopsis
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.
Expectations Going In
A gothic tale full of towering cathedrals, veiled secrets and a love loyal unto death.
— SableReview Overview
There isn't a dog or a cat :( Which means they can't die, thank god :D A horse gets devoured by a monster during an action scene (RIP), plus some minor creature deaths. But nothing emotionally heavy, more incidental to the fight scenes.
Sable's Thoughts
I’m a lover of everything gothic, so the premise of the book really resonated with me. And of course, the cover is absolutely beautiful! I was looking forward to a grown-up, magical world full of towering cathedrals and veiled secrets, but what I found was sadly more of your typical YA-fantasy with thin worldbuilding, low stakes and needless bickering between people who barely have a reason to care about each other.
The book starts out relatively strong, with a mysterious monologue and the introduction of the diviners, but it went downhill from there. We are led to believe that Sybil and her “sisters” are close as can be, but never actually get to see much of that love for each other. They’re also supposed to be those holy priestesses that are barely known and deeply sheltered, whose hunger for life understandably makes them sneak out like college girls the first chance they get. But then they’ve apparently already been sleeping with the various knights that regularly come to visit the cathedral and have no struggle at all to throw their year-long indoctrination overboard? I think it’s supposed to be empowering (god knows I’m not shaming them for sleeping with hot knights), but it read a little inconsistent with what growing up in a fanatically religious environment might actually mean. While Rory kept talking about how sad Sybil’s life is, the girls seemed to take it more as a 10 year employment at times.
Sadly those contradictions kept on creeping through the whole book, with the story seemingly having a hard time committing to the rules and stakes it wanted to set for itself. The world and its people were supposed to be suppressed, but seemed rather fine from what we as the reader got to experience (which was, to be fair, not a lot). The influence and power of the Omens stayed ambiguous throughout most of the story, and the quest of the group was easy to the point I felt bad for the enemies at various instances. Even the artifacts they were looking for had such random abilities I struggle to imagine how they’d give power to anyone at all.
The romance part, too, was sadly lacking. While I did enjoy Sybil as a strong female character and Rory’s bratty and emo-adjacent vibes, what is packaged as enemies-to-lovers is really just bickering-strangers turned insta-lust. We don’t get enough time for a true slow-burn setup or any character-building moments which would make the pay-off feel earned, and them being enemies is a bit of a stretch in general when they’re really just kind of needlessly bristly towards each other.
Well, and then there is the actual plot…
Friends and familiars, I think I missed the plot.
Bear with me: the whole idea was that religion is just a net of lies and myths that keeps the average dudette in Traum trapped in worshipping false gods. But if those gods have no power, then why does their existence (or their death) matter? Nobody actually knows them, one is sitting in a random room full of books, one has been dead for years and another one lived hidden away from the world, and nobody at any point gave a single flying fuck. It seemed like the group wanted to free a land that at no point really needed any freeing at all.
And that’s the thing: even after they succeed, nothing actually changes for anyone in Traum. Nobody outside their little group ever knew the Omens existed as people, so nobody notices they’re gone either. There’s no scene of the kingdom learning the truth, no reckoning, no crumbling faith. The “brainwashed society” the book keeps insisting on is never actually shown reacting to anything, because the belief system was never built on people having contact with the Omens in the first place – it ran through the cathedral and the abbess the whole time. So functionally, removing the Omens doesn’t dismantle the machinery of control at all, which means our little group needlessly killed a few random people whose biggest crime was being creepy and immortal through no fault of their own. Which, I guess makes sense with the ending and Benji’s betrayal, but how did nobody in the group ever question any of this? How did Benji even have time to bumble around the country, isn’t he the literal KING? AND YOU’RE TELLING ME YOU COULDN’T JUST HAVE HIT HIM OVER THE FRIKIN HEAD IN THE END? What are we even doing.
There are also some thoughts about the Gargoyles and how girls are more loyal than boys (pff), and I’m still wondering why the Abbess didn’t just send some water instead of whole frikin bodies of dead girls to the Omens, but yeah. You get the idea.
In the end, The Knight and the Moth had all the right pieces for something I’d have loved: a gothic-flavored setting, a fun role-reversal romance, an incredible cover (very important!). But it never quite commits to any of it long enough to earn the stakes it keeps insisting on. It’s not a bad time, exactly, just a frustratingly hollow one. I’ll probably still pick up the sequel, if only to see how Sybil is gonna deal with the imminent shortage of water ;) and if I was right about thinking that something is up with those sprites.
If you’re looking for a quick little read, this book won’t hurt! It probably won’t do much at all. But you know what they say:
You don’t have to be good, or useful, for someone to care about you.— Rachel Gillig, The Knight and the Moth
The Verdict
A fast-food-style, YA-adjacent but overall unoffensive fantasy story that prioritizes cute scenes and quick bickering over actual world-building and stakes.
