Book 2 in the Stonewater Kingdom series
Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 📖
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read The Knave and the Moon yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
OPENING HOOK
We have a queen turning to stone, a knight with no memory, and a boy king drunk on power. This book rises up from the wreckage of book one and just keeps going full speed ahead.
THE FULL STORY — SPOILERS INCLUDED
So, as we begin book two, Benji’s pretty much gone full villain, complete with a murdered best friend and kidnapped bride. He’s been playing a much longer game than any of us gave him credit for and is keeping Sybil (formerly known as Six) drugged up, convinced that her friends are dead, and forced into a wedding that was ready to go the second they get back to the castle. He has leaves brought in to bait sprites into attacking the ceremony making them look more like monsters than people already believe, to set himself up as a savior who will reunite the kingdom. The sprite attack backfires a bit though, since Sybil is speared through the abdomen as she tries to kill him and the wedding ceremony was technically not completed. Benji doesn’t care about the finer details of a marriage-not-marriage though, expecting that nobody will question it once they see Sybil’s miraculously divine recovery. From there he rolls out a series of tournaments in every hamlet, supposedly to celebrate their union but really designed to hand out riches to buy the allegiance from the noble families of his closest knights. The gold is just what was looted from the dead omens in book one, and things are rigged with the knights each possessing an artifact, so this circus is all about appearances and gaining support.
Sybil, understandably and to the surprise of no one (including Benji), is trying to kill him. She was speared through the abdomen in one attempt, but we’ve learned that stone forming inside her has saved her life. She’s put it together that this is exactly what happened to the omens: they were kept docile by getting just enough spring water, but once that’s cut off, you begin to turn to stone just like the gargoyles. She remembers the Weaver (from book one), who tried to starve herself to death and couldn’t, only turning further into stone.
This book splits POVs between Rory and Sybil, and I was happy to see things from Rory’s perspective since they spend the first chunk of the book apart. Maude revived Rory with spring water after Benji left him for dead. He’s alive, but changed, with stone eyes he now has to hide and a complete loss of his memories before death. He infiltrates the knights in search of the loom stone to restore his memory, by keeping his helmet on and blending in. While he’s searching for the stone among the knights, Maude enters the first competition anonymously, winning the joust and kicking Benji’s ass in the process. Between the two of them with Bartholomew winning the events, and Sybil on her own destroying the stone artifacts, they’re quietly unraveling every bit of planned goodwill that Benji is trying to buy from the nobles. In the next tournament, Rory as the unknown knave wins, and Sybil just knows by the way he moves and by his voice, that Rory is not dead. He has stone eyes now, meaning his memories may be gone, but he’s alive and standing in front of her. She destroyed the loom stone that would have restored his memories, so she can only hope he was able to use it while among the other knights and stationed close to it.
I knew that Rory wasn’t actually dead (where is the romance in that), but what I didn’t call was how. That he would die, and the spring water would bring him back was easy to figure out once we closed the first book, but until the end there when he’s left for dead I hadn’t seen the betrayal and murder coming. Anyway, now neither Benji or Sybil knows if he remembers, and they’re both trying not to tip anyone off. Sybil doesn’t know because Rory’s playing it close to the chest, and Benji is suspicious as hell but heartily welcomes him back “for show” anyway, hoping the memory loss is real. Everybody in this book is lying to everybody, with ulterior motives and secret plans, and it’s so damn good.
In the Chiming Wood Benji realizes that Rory does have his memories and things blow wide open. After a chaotic fight Rory, Bartholomew, Maude, and Sybil retreat to Maude’s family home to heal and regroup. This was my happy place within the whole duology, seeing this little family of friends together again. Watching Sybil and Rory find their way back to each other against impossible forces (even death cannot stop true love, The Princess Bride taught me). The yearning and devotion in this series is everything, and you can tell they belong together.
From there they take the fight to Benji, and gather the nobles on the beach near the old Weaver showdown to execute him, electing to put Maude on the throne next. Instead of stoning him like they did his grandfather, Benji chooses to go down fighting, and Sybil is the one who steps up with her hammer against his sword. She has him beat in the caverns on the verge of death, but at the last second he flips away using the stone coin, heading straight for the tor and the spring below the ruins of Aisling Cathedral that can bring him back to life. Everyone chases him there, straight into a swarm of sprites who have been tearing through the rubble to get to the spring. The sprites turn on Benji because even they know he’s bad news, but Sybil lands the blow that finally takes him down. In that same moment though, Maude jumps in front of the stone coin he threw to save a sprite, and it’s fatal. Maude, mother figure, beloved friend, devoted knight, and king for one day, meets her end with honour, as a good king. Rory and Sybil are crushed, but they’re pulled away when they see a crumbling Bartholomew jumping into the spring and Sybil goes in after him.
While she’s under water, drowning one last time, she talks to the ancient ox-like creature that lay in the fields of bromegrass and eventually became part of the land and the tor itself as the world grew up around her. One day a carver of stone came, hitting her again and again until they found her limestone heart and the spring of her blood. Centuries later another carver of stone was born in her waters, and she would go on to become the abbess. Aisling may not have known they were the heart and blood of the being, but she learned quickly that they possessed a strange magic. The ox goes on to tell her that she and Rory will have hundreds of years together before they eventually turn fully to stone, and asks that they mind the tor. She also asks that someone carry the true story forward, not for glory, but so that history may not repeat itself. Sybil assumes she means her or Rory, but she does not. She leans in gently to whisper a name to Sybil instead, and when Rory pulls her out of the water, she shares that the ox told her to carve Bartholomew from a new piece of the magical limestone. Smaller, and not quite the same. But still him.
Then we jump one hundred years forward, to a new king arriving with a notebook to transcribe the story, and Bartholomew is the one who tells it.
BEST PART OF THIS BOOK
The final chapter. I’m a sucker for epilogues and bonus chapters that catch us up with characters down the road so we can see what all that sacrifice built, but this one had it built into the final chapter of the main story, and I do love a good ending like that.
WORST PART OF THIS BOOK
Losing Maude. I understood it, because she had done what she came to do and she was ready to go, but it still broke my heart.
THE STEAM RATING BREAKDOWN
🔥🔥🔥 — Warm. There aren’t many scenes, but what’s there is steamy, and the romance between Rory and Sybil is central to the emotional core of the book. Content warnings: on-page character death, violence, and a very brief suicide storyline involving Bartholomew, the stone gargoyle at the end.
THE ENDING — SATISFIED OR DISAPPOINTED?
Satisfied completely, Bartholomew. We are reminded that things can be better than they have been.
WOULD WE REREAD IT?
Yes, absolutely.
THE TWIST WE DIDN’T SEE COMING
Rory being alive wasn’t the surprise, but how he came back to us was. Dying, and being revived by the spring water was unexpected until Benji ran him through. I knew where it was going as soon as that happened, because we knew people came back from the dead in the spring water, but up to that point I didn’t expect it.
A MOMENT THAT STOOD OUT
The regroup at Maude’s family home. After everything falling apart, watching them come together again made my heart happy.
WHO IS THIS FOR
Fantasy readers, romance readers, adventure readers; really anyone who loves a well-built world with lore that feels a bit different from what you’re used to despite being easy to understand.
WHERE TO GET THIS BOOK
📖 Physical Book
Amazon CA | Amazon US | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook
Audible CA | Audible US | Libro.fm
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📚 More from the Stonewater Kingdom
Book 1 — The Knight and the Moth | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 — Read the Review
Book 2 — The Knave and the Moon | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 — You’re here!
Ready for more reviews from CJ? Find More Here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
📖 | Series: Stonewater Kingdom Book 2 | Genre: Fantasy/Romantasy | Steam: 🔥🔥
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