Book: The Knave and the Moon by Rachel Gillig
Reviewed by Anonymous
Rating: 4/5
I really wanted to love The Knave and The Moon but sadly, I didn't.
Rachel Gillig is still an author whose writing I adore, and The Knight and the Moth was one of my favorite reads last year. I went into The Knave and the Moon with very high expectations.
And while I think this is a good book, it just didn't hit me the way the first one did.
I appreciated the way Gillig explores the idea of history repeating itself . BUT while I can appreciate the choices made thematically to echo the events of the past in to the present it just did not make for a great reading experience for me.
I also felt like some of the characters were lacking in character depth, such as Benji. I felt like Benji was not a very complex villain but maybe that was the point?
The writing is still beautiful. The atmosphere is still there. Gillig has such a distinct way of creating these strange, gothic, almost storybook worlds, and there were absolutely moments where I could feel the magic of her writing. But I never became as emotionally consumed by this story as I was by the first book.
That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. I did. I just kept waiting for that feeling I had with The Knight and the Moth , and it just never happened for me.
But that ending. 🥹
I genuinely loved the way this story wrapped up, and I found the ending incredibly sweet. It gave me some of the emotional payoff I had been looking for and left me feeling much warmer toward the book as a whole.
The Knave and the Moon is a book I appreciated more than I loved. I admire what Rachel Gillig was doing with the story, particularly the themes of repetition, history, and the ways stories can echo through generations. I just didn't connect with it on the same level as its predecessor.
Still, Rachel Gillig remains an author I'll happily pick up every time.
⭐️⭐️⭐️½