Book 1 in the Stonewater Kingdom series
Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 | 📖
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read The Knight and The Moth yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
OPENING HOOK
Buckle up, Bartholomew. This book takes a girl who’s been drowned in a sacred pool since childhood, hands her a beloved gargoyle sidekick and a knight who can walk through walls, and then spends the next few hundred pages ripping apart the foundation of everything she was taught to believe in. I finished this in just over a day and then went straight on to book two.
THE FULL STORY — SPOILERS INCLUDED
We open at Aisling Cathedral with six numbered diviners (One through Six) living under shrouds so no one, not even each other or themselves, can see their eyes. They’re foundlings, brought in as orphans and trained up to divine for the omens, the god-like beings who supposedly used their stone objects to drive off the sprites and build the Stonewater Kingdom in the land of Traum. Each girl also learns a craft for when her service ends; Six, who we are meeting here, is given the gift of learning to sculpt and work stone with hammer and chisel. In exchange for being raised within the safety of the cathedral, they’re held beneath an oily spring-fed pool until they drown, and whatever they dream is given as prophecy to those giving coin for a reading. It’s awful every time, and my heart broke a little for Six, despite her determination to carry the burden without complaint. She has the heart of a hero from the time we meet her.
King Benedict Castor III (Benji to his friends) has come to have his future divined, and Six draws the short straw. She divines five ill omens for the king from what she does see, and afterward, sick from the spring water and going back to the diviner’s cottage to sleep, she runs into a rude knight. Sir Rodrick “Rory” Myndacious tells her flat out that she knows nothing of life outside within the five hamlets, and that he doesn’t believe in the gods at all. She quickly decides that he’s the worst knight she’s ever had the misfortune of meeting. When she realizes the King and Maude are there as well, she also smells the sweet rot of spring water with them. She begs him and his knights to take the diviners to Coulson Faire for one night out, and when they say no, she blackmails them with her knowledge of the stolen water and it works like a charm.
While dancing and drinking around bonfires in Coulson Faire, the king challenges Rory to a duel over his craft (that of being a knight), a wager where Rory has to be knocked down in three tries or his future gets divined, and if he wins, the king howls at the moon naked. Rory picks the diviners as his opponent, and what a mistake that was, because when the others fail, Six is the one who puts him on his back.
The Diviners get their night at the faire, and head back to the cottage, happy and well spent, but that’s when things start to go sideways for them. The knights leave to continue on their journey, and every morning after that another diviner disappears. The gargoyles who serve the abbess start locking the girls in at night under the guise of protection, including the one odd gargoyle shaped like a bat assigned to guard Six, who loves to talk and insists on calling every single person Bartholomew, no matter who they actually are. When only One and Six are left, One removes her shroud, looks in a mirror, and is horrified by something she won’t explain. The next morning she’s gone too, and when the gargoyles try to stop Six from leaving, Rory shows up and uses a coin to get her outside the walls. Six quickly recognizes it as the Artful Brigand’s coin and thinks to herself, is this most foul knight in Traum an Omen? She finds a bit of comfort in her gargoyle having followed them as they steal off into the night.
From there it’s Rory, Six, and the gargoyle heading to Seacht, hamlet of the Harried Scribe, where they meet up with Benji and his knight Maude. They challenge the stone-eyed Scribe to his craft, kill him, and take his inkwell, but right before he dies, he licks a bit of Six’s spilled blood off the floor. Something about that seems unusual to Six, and it adds to her growing suspicion that Rory may be right; the omens aren’t gods at all, just men who were elevated to that status. Six can’t easily give up the idea that she’s given ten years of her life to a lie, and she runs. She wanders the streets alone, looking for her sisters before Benji’s knights catch up to her.
That’s when Benji lays it all out: he wants the false gods dead and their wealth used to actually help the hamlets, freeing Stonewater from the abbess’s grip for good. His grandfather had reached the same conclusion years earlier, and he took out the Faithful Forester but died before getting his hands on the chime, executed for heresy in the process. Benji wants to finish what his grandfather started, also adding that Rory used to be a foundling himself who worked for the Artful Brigand stealing spring water, before teaming up with Benji’s grandfather to kill the Brigand and take his coin. Six agrees to help, on the condition that they help her find the missing diviners too. Benji tours the hamlets under the cover of introducing himself as a new king paying respects to the old gods, never telling the nobles what he’s really up to.
Somewhere in here Rory ends up pouring hot wax over her to mold a custom suit of armor, and while innocent, it’s hot and not a subtle scene, building tension the whole time. We know these two are drawn to each other and it’s moments like this we love.
Next stop is the Fervent Peaks for the Oarsman where Six and the gargoyle fight off a hungry mountain sprite, saving Benji along the way. When challenged by Rory, the Oarsman calls for Six to be the one he goes up against, leaving Rory to train Six for three days straight, and Maude lends her armour. The Oarsman, stone-eyed like the Scribe, bites Six mid-fight, saying he wants the spring water running through her veins like the others he’s drank from. Six realizes what has actually been happening to the diviners: their bodies are delivered to the omens every ten years, the spring water in their blood the only thing keeping the omens alive at all. They’ve turned half to stone, hoarding piles of gold, barely a mockery of living and waiting for arrival of the next dead diviner to keep the cycle alive. Six wins, kills him with her own hammer and chisel, but comes out of it hurt.
She recovers at Maude’s place in the Chiming Wood, and while wandering the house alone finds writings from Benji’s grandfather that confirm it. No diviner has ever been spotted living free in the hamlets after their service. They’ve all been killed and drained by the Omens.
At a sacred ceremony not long after with idleweed smoke and a noble striking the stone chime they’re searching for, the sprites who appear as surrounding trees, attack. The smoke and chime combination induce a strange trance, creating chaos where Six recovers the chime and Maude gets badly injured. That night Sybil sleeps with Rory and takes off her shroud for him for the first time. In the morning she sees her reflection and finds that her own eyes have turned to stone. Rory tells her he still loves her anyway and asks him to call her Sybil from now on, not Six.
With the coin, inkwell, oar, and chime all in hand, the group heads to the Cliffs of Bellidine for the last object, the loom stone. To reach the Weaver, they have to get through an ocean-carved cave system riddled with traps; only Six makes it all the way through. There is no battle or challenge here though. The Weaver is done and tired of everything. She asks Six to kill her, and before she goes she confirms all of it: that the abbess collects payment from nobles for divinations and pays the omens to keep performing as gods, the diviners are murdered and drained for their blood instead of released to live free, and that the omens were never gods to begin with. Just five craftsmen who fought each other and died on the tor, being resurrected by the abbess with her spring water. The diviners also come to be as dead (or dying) foundling girls, brought back the same way. Bartholomew her beloved gargoyle companion, it turns out, was the very first diviner. A boy once, who got too curious and was locked away and turned into a gargoyle for it. The abbess’s most obedient and faithful diviners (as Six once was) got the same treatment through the years. Everyone else, she just killed every ten years before they start asking too many questions. Her real name is Aisling, thus giving her name to Aisling Cathedral.
They go back to confront her directly, kill her, and bring the whole cathedral down, burying the spring for good. Then, walking away from the wreckage, Benji turns on all of them. Stabs Rory through the side, smashes Bartholomew’s wing off, and tells Maude, who’s practically a mother to both him and Rory, to go. He leaves Rory for dead and turns to Sybil saying she’s going to be his new queen and lend legitimacy to his reign with the old gods gone, or he will finish off her friends right there in front of her. She goes with him to give Rory, Maude and Bartholomew a fighting chance, and book one ends there.
BEST PART OF THIS BOOK
Rory and Sybil, of course. Two people who’ve had every reason to stop trusting anyone, slowly building something real against all odds. It’s beautiful and hopeful, and I loved it.
WORST PART OF THIS BOOK
Benji was the obvious suspect, because the betrayal itself hurts, but what actually gets me is the sheer horror of how this whole kingdom is built on a faith that its subjects worship blindly. They’re told to murder the sprites and revere the Omens, and it’s disheartening, to say the least, to see how a system of faith can be built and manipulated like that. That’s tied for how easily Maude, Rory and Bartholomew are discarded by Benji when he turns on them. That was equally as horrifying.
THE STEAM RATING BREAKDOWN
🔥🔥 — Pretty warm. There aren’t many scenes, but the ones that are there are explicit and open door. The romance between Rory and Sybil is woven straight through the political and mythological stakes, not a side note.
THE TWIST WE DIDN’T SEE COMING
Benji’s real agenda. Everyone (Rory, Maude, Bartholomew, Sybil) thought they were working toward the same goal, but it turns out that they were not.
THE ENDING — SATISFIED OR DISAPPOINTED?
Not satisfied, but it’s not supposed to be. This is the halfway point of a bigger story, not a resolution, and the cliffhanger does exactly what it’s meant to by making book two non-negotiable.
WOULD WE REREAD IT?
Yes, without question. The atmosphere, the writing, how unique the whole mythology is… it’s beautiful. Rachel Gillig has become one of my favourite authors.
WHO IS THIS FOR
Anyone who wants political intrigue woven through their fantasy, alongside real magic and beautifully developed characters. Gillig’s characters are always done well, so if you loved her other work, this one delivers the same. On that note, you should absolutely check out the Shepherd King duology as well.
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: 🔥🔥 — You’re here!
Book 2 — The Knave and the Moon | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 — Read the Review
Ready for more reviews from CJ? Find More Here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
📖 | Series: Stonewater Kingdom Book 1 | Genre: Fantasy Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥
TAGS: Fantasy Romance, Romantasy, Rachel Gillig, Stonewater Kingdom, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn Romance, Slow Burn Romantasy, Political Fantasy, Series Review, 5 Star Read, Does Rory Die, What is Six’s Real Name, Do Rory and Six Get Together, Does Six Die, The Knight and the Moth Bartholomew, Sybil and Rodrick, Sybil and Roderick, The Knight and the Moth spice level