The Knave and the Moon by Rachel Gillig (The Stonewater Kingdom, #2) * * * *

I read The Knave and the Moon by Rachel Gillig as my September 2026 Pick of the Month. I chose it because it is the second and final book in the Stonewater Kingdom duology, following The Knight and the Moth, which I read last year. I gave that first book three stars. It was fine, but I found Sybil frustrating, particularly because so much of the story revolved around a quest whose eventual destination seemed obvious to me long before it became obvious to her. She kept insisting on things that I was already fairly certain were wrong, and after a while, watching her slowly catch up became more irritating than suspenseful.

So I went into The Knave and the Moon with some trepidation. I wanted to know how the story ended, but I was not particularly confident that I was going to enjoy getting there.

Surprisingly, I liked this one considerably more. I gave it four stars. It is not quite in my five star, I am going to think about this forever and recommend it to everybody category, but it did something I was not really expecting it to do. It redeemed the duology for me.

A warning before going any further: this review contains spoilers for The Knight and the Moth. I will not spoil the major revelations or ending of The Knave and the Moon.

One of the biggest improvements was Sybil herself. She is still recognisably the same character, but the growth she went through in the first book has actually stuck. She is more confident in what she wants, more aware of what she is capable of, and more willing to act on that knowledge. She has not suddenly transformed into an entirely different person simply because she is now in book two. Instead, she feels like someone who has been changed by everything she has already survived. That development made her much easier for me to like.

The structure also changes because this time we get two points of view, Sybil's and Rory's. And yes, Rory is alive. That is one of those unavoidable book one spoilers when talking about the sequel.

One problem I did have with the dual POV was with the audiobook. The two POVs are voiced by Samantha Hydeson and Rupert Channing and they do it at two different paces. Samantha is slower and Rupert is faster, so it was hard to pick a sweet spot that worked for both speed-wise. They should have paid more attention to them matching each other in pace.

Then there is Benji.

We now know that Benji was evil all along. His nice boy persona was exactly that, a persona, and even as a child he had learned that being pleasant and agreeable was a very effective way of making sure people did not suspect what was underneath. In The Knave and the Moon, he has become king, and he is spectacularly bad at it.

I was initially a little disappointed that Benji was going to be the major antagonist because I was expecting something bigger. Instead, I ended up really enjoying just how pathetic his particular form of villainy is. He is dangerous because he has enormous power, not because he has the intelligence or maturity to use it well. His idea of being king seems to be approximately what a five year old might imagine being king means. Everybody bows to you. Everybody obeys you. Everybody tells you how wonderful you are. And if they do not, obviously you need to put on a bigger show until they change their minds.

He also wants Sybil as his wife, and there is a distinctly childish element of wanting something partly because Rory wanted it first. Benji may technically be a young man, but emotionally he often feels like a boy grabbing someone else's toy and announcing that it belongs to him now.

That childishness becomes particularly important when he decides to hold a series of tournaments across the kingdom. His first royal tour has not exactly produced the adoration he expected, so he needs another way to solidify his rule and win over the nobility. His solution is spectacle. He uses the sacred stone relics collected in the previous book as prizes and political bargaining chips, convinced that tournaments, pageantry, and grand gestures will make people love their new king.

I actually dreaded this part when I realised there was going to be a tournament. Romantasy has become absolutely saturated with tournaments, trials, competitions, and elaborate sequences in which everybody has to complete a series of increasingly dangerous challenges. At this point, whenever another one appears, I immediately wonder whether the story actually needs it or whether somebody has simply decided that romantasy requires a tournament now.

Here, it works.

The tournament exists because of Benji's personality and because of his political situation. He needs to establish his authority. He wants to impress people. He has sacred objects he can distribute to buy loyalty. Most importantly, he has exactly the kind of immature understanding of power that would make him think watching people compete for his favour is what kingship looks like. He is essentially a boy playing with toy soldiers, except his soldiers are actual human beings who can bleed and die.

That makes the tournament part of the story rather than an obstacle course inserted into it. There are several rounds, but they contribute to the political situation and to Benji's increasingly disastrous attempts to control the kingdom. Naturally, things do not go according to plan.

His other great political idea is to turn the sprites into a common enemy. Benji believes that people need something frightening to unite against, so he tries to make the sprites into his rallying cry. Again, it is the sort of idea that sounds clever if your understanding of leadership consists mostly of manipulating people into cheering for you. Unfortunately for Benji, deliberately creating fear while simultaneously annoying almost everyone in your kingdom is not necessarily the best way to establish a stable reign.

And this is where I think The Knave and the Moon develops the themes of the first book in an interesting direction.

For me, The Knight and the Moth was largely about the deconstruction of religion. Sybil had built her entire identity around a religious system and around the Omens, only to discover that the truths she had been taught were not what she believed them to be. Her journey required her to dismantle something that had structured virtually her entire life.

This book feels much more concerned with interconnectedness, particularly the interconnectedness of nature.

The sprites are a perfect example. From early in the series, they are treated as dangerous, malicious creatures. But gradually the distinction between dangerous and evil becomes important. The sprites are not evil. They are creatures following their nature. They have instincts and needs, and they occupy a particular place in the world whether humans understand that place or not.

As things begin to go wrong across Traum, including strange earthquakes, the story starts asking what happens when humans interfere with a natural system without actually understanding it. Something can be frightening to us and still be necessary. Something can be dangerous and still belong. Nature does not organise itself according to human categories of good and evil.

I did work out the direction of the final reveal fairly early, but interestingly, that did not bother me nearly as much as my predictions did in the first book. This time I was interested in watching the pieces come together because the story surrounding the answer was strong enough to carry me there. Knowing where a story is going is not necessarily a problem. It becomes a problem when waiting for the characters to arrive feels like work, and The Knave and the Moon avoided that for me.

The romance between Sybil and Rory also worked better than I expected. It is present without swallowing the rest of the book. There are a few mildly spicy scenes, but nothing particularly graphic, and I actually thought they were competently written. I am not generally reading books for the spice these days, so the fact that I thought those scenes worked is probably praise in itself. Their relationship feels like part of the story rather than the story having to stop so that the romance can happen.

And then there is Bartholomew, the gargoyle. I found him somewhat confusing in the first book and did not particularly love him then, but he really grew on me here. He is funny, strange, and unexpectedly sweet, and by the end I had become quite fond of him.

In general, I think that is the greatest strength of this sequel. The characters simply work better. Sybil is more mature without losing the qualities that make her Sybil. Rory benefits enormously from having his own point of view. Bartholomew became much more endearing to me. Even Benji works precisely because he is not some magnificent, terrifying mastermind. He is an incompetent young ruler with far too much power and a child's understanding of what authority is supposed to look like.

The story itself is tighter too. The Knave and the Moon is actually a little shorter than The Knight and the Moth, and it felt shorter as well. There is no long training sequence dragging everything down, and the tournament gives the middle of the book a clear structure and momentum. Most importantly, I was not spending half the novel impatiently waiting for Sybil to realise something I had worked out hours earlier.

There is also a political idea running underneath all of this that I found rather entertaining. Maybe we should try putting competent people in positions of power. Revolutionary concept, I know.

Benji wants the appearance of kingship. He wants the bowing, the obedience, the spectacle, and the power to tell everyone else what to do. What he does not understand is that leadership involves responsibility toward the people you are leading. Being able to acquire power and being capable of wielding it are two very different things. That is not exactly an observation restricted to fantasy kingdoms either.

The other theme that stood out to me was history, particularly the danger of allowing history to become a story people repeat without understanding it. The kingdom is trapped in patterns created long before these characters were born. Breaking those patterns requires discovering what actually happened, understanding why it happened, and then consciously refusing to repeat it. The familiar warning that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it fits this book particularly well.

Ultimately, The Knave and the Moon was a much stronger book for me than The Knight and the Moth. I gave the first book three stars and this one four, and I think the improvement came from both the characters and the structure. Sybil's development made her much more compelling, the dual point of view strengthened the story, the tournament had an actual narrative and political purpose, and the themes of nature, power, history, and interconnectedness gave the conclusion more weight.

If you enjoyed The Knight and the Moth, I would absolutely recommend finishing the duology. More importantly, if you were like me and thought the first book was merely okay, I would still recommend giving the sequel a chance. I almost went into it expecting another three star read, and instead it managed to change how I felt about the series as a whole.

Sometimes the first book builds the pieces. The Knave and the Moon finally makes them fit.