While fantasy is probably my favourite genre of fiction, fantasy-romance (aka “romantasy”) has not been a subgenre that has appealed to me very much. Nevertheless, in the interest of expanding my horizons, I gave The Knight and the Moth (a very popular recent romantasy novel) a try. Unfortunately, despite attempting to go in with an open mind, I could not avoid my own prejudices as I read this book. I had not read much romance fiction in the past, but my impressions of the genre led me to expect that romantasy was going to be vapid and poorly thought out, with exaggerated prose full of superlatives, overly lavish descriptions, and cheesy metaphors. I expected overwrought, hyperbolic dialogue, and that character merit would be determined mainly based on looks (i.e. the hot characters would automatically be the best characters). I expected a relatively superficial story, which would essentially act as a spice-delivery mechanism. So as I started to read this novel, and found some of these expectations were not quite unmet, my eyes got a little shrouded (that’s a nod to something in the book). I didn’t really notice or appreciate the ways that this book also did better than my expectations. So the long-winded caveat is that if you’re prone to favouring this flavour of novel, my review might not serve you very well.

The story follows Sybil, one of six diviners who are regularly drowned (and revived) in order to convey prophetic visions given to them by five powerful beings known as Omens. When the new young king arrives one day to have his divination given, events start to shake up Sybil’s routine and once the other diviners start to mysteriously disappear, she and one of the king’s knights, named Roderick Mendacious, go on a quest to find the diviners as well as reckon with the implications of her visions and the Omens who provide them. The premise of the story sounded interesting, especially for one who loves the “gods among us” theme. I was eager to find out more about the Omens and the role they played in this world. In fact, after some initial setup, the novel ends up following a fairly classic fantasy structure, where our heroes encounter one omen after another as they journey around the country on their quest. That made me think both of epic literature, like Homer’s Odyssey, and video games that lead players through key challenges/encounters and level bosses. The plot of the novel moved quite quickly and the action sequences around each ‘level’ were pretty well done and exciting.

Gillig’s prose was serviceable, but I cannot say that she subverted my expectations of romantasy with it. However, the story was surprisingly chaste compared to what I anticipated. There’s a lot of flirting and close moments, but only one truly spicy chapter (so if that’s what you’re here for, you may be disappointed). Unfortunately, that chapter did contain cheesy lines like “[He] kissed me in the way no story can express”, or “He didn’t like being away from my mouth” and other examples which I will leave out for spoiler reasons. I found it to be a strange creative choice that Gillig avoided all use of feeling words (either sensations or emotions) in the love-scene chapter (and possibly throughout most of the book, actually. I only noticed it after that chapter). She (through Sybil’s thoughts and narration) would describe someone’s facial expressions (e.g. frown) or would use a metaphor or simile to describe an emotion-adjacent thought, but did not directly describe what any character was feeling. The reader is left to translate for themselves. I have not read enough (especially not romance fiction) to know if this is a common technique, but to me it made the characters feel more superficial. I feel like this cost their personalities some complexity and nuance — if they frown, they’re unhappy; nothing else going on there. It was harder to really get inside characters hearts and it felt disengaging and distancing. The result was that I also empathized less and cared less about what happened to them over the course of the novel.

While I won’t get into my thoughts on the plot, and especially how it handled some of the world-building and mythology, I’ll just say that I had some problems with it and felt it was kind of narrow. The world seemed to be very small, just the few people our main cast of characters needed to encounter to achieve their ends. There was not much seen of the broader society or culture, especially one that could support the mythology and religion of the Omens, which was central to the story. Like extras in a movie, or NPCs and side characters in a video game, who have nothing better to do than wait around for players to encounter them, the world-building seemed a bit more decorative than I’m used to seeing in epic fantasy. I’ll concede that people tell me not to expect high quality fantasy in a romantasy book, but it still felt dissatisfying here. 

All that being said, by the last quarter of the book, I was finally more invested in the story and had a good time. The ending (even though it kind of leads to the sequel, so be forewarned) was pretty satisfying to me. I liked the ending because it made me feel that Gillig had actually thought through the rest of the story more than I had previously credited her for. In the end, this book did not make me a romantasy fan, and I doubt I will be returning to the Stonewater Kingdom for its sequel, The Knave and the Moon, but I am happy that I read this book and dipped my toes into the murky spring of romantasy (yes, that’s another nod to something in the book).

3 stars

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