Exclusive Interview
‘Knave and the Moon’ Author Rachel Gillig Breaks Down ‘Knight & the Moth’ Sequel Ending
Rachel Gillig always imagined a happy ending in The Knave and the Moon, bringing Sybil, Rory, and Bartholomew’s journey full circle.
The first installment of Gillig’s Stonewater Kingdom fantasy duology, The Knight and the Moth, swept readers into the complex world where revered, god-like Omens send visions to Diviners like Sybil. When her fellow Diviners are kidnapped, Sybil leaves the cathedral she’s been bound to her entire life, enlisting the help of non-believer knight Rodrick to find them. When she learns that Omens aren’t gods at all but corrupt beings, Sybil joins Rory in putting an end to them.
Sybil and Rory succeed, only to discover the corruption didn’t stop at the Omens and their creator, the Abbess who raised her. Sybil and Rory are betrayed by their former ally, the power-hungry King Benji. Though The Knight and the Moth leaves Sybil and Rory in dire circumstances as their romance is just beginning, the two manage to overcome them in the sequel. With the help of their gargoyle friend Bartholomew, of course.
In fact, The Knave and the Moon’s epilogue wraps up the trio’s journey by flashing forward 100 years. Rory and Sybil are as in love as ever, telling their story and the truth of the Omens to future generations of Traum. “I knew that they would be together,” Gillig tells Swooon. “I knew it was gonna be a bittersweet ending in a lot of ways, but that ultimately the three of them that were made of stone [and] would be at the Tor at the end.”
She continues, “I wanted it to be full circle. I think when I had written it and I looked back, I was like, ‘Well, the last chapter doesn’t necessarily have to be here,’ but I think I wanted readers to just have a glimpse of what could have happened and how the Kingdom has changed in big and small ways.”
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Gillig never considered delving into that century-long period between Sybil killing Benji and the epilogue, which reveals that the kingdom’s religion hasn’t disappeared entirely. “I don’t know if I even really fully answer questions,” the author reflects. “I just kind of asked them, which is like, ‘You destroy faith and how do you put it back together?’ And I kind of leave it bleary.”
Instead of getting into the technicalities of that process, she wanted to keep it centered on Bartholomew, who almost dies in the final act of the book. Sybil manages to reconstruct him and bring him back to life. Before that, Gillig almost killed the gargoyle, who has become beloved by fans, in an early draft of The Knight and the Moth, but she “fell into a fit of hysterics” while trying to write it.
“So, I didn’t even attempt that [in the sequel], though I did know his body is crumbling, and I didn’t want there to be an easy way to fix that…” she says. “It had to have the emotional impact that it needs to have. And so ultimately that came with him crumbling, but I knew if I killed him off, I truly think it would be like a career-ending decision. Yeah, I couldn’t show my face again. So he had to come back. He is like the heart and soul of the story anyway.”
The romantic subplot between Sybil and Rory is important to Gillig’s overall themes, too. She views the duology as quest books with external and internal journeys. “Sybil’s journey in the first book is going from a very cloistered environment to a broader world, expanding her worldview, realizing not everything is true,” Gillig explains. “And I think in the internal journey, there’s a lot of vulnerabilities, and I think a romance balances that really well.”
She adds, “With the sequel, the internal journey is going from quite hopeless to hopeful. And I think love is a very hopeful thing. So I think that one is even more of a natural companion for that kind of story. I think it’s one of those things where I don’t even really think about pacing or weighing it. I just think that they work really well together, even in subtle ways. As we say, it’s a subplot, but there’s little to no smidgens of it throughout. And I think the story is better for it.”
But with that happy ending, is there a world in which Gillig revisits the Stonewater Kingdom down the line? “I get asked that a lot, and I take it as the sincerest form of flattery,” she begins. “It means people want to spend more time there. I don’t like to say never about anything, but I’m very purposeful with my sequels in that it feels full circle. I never write intending to keep adding on what the future may bring. Who knows? But that’s where we’re at now.”
Next up for Gillig is the romantasy standalone, As Bad Luck Would Have It, in which a trickster from an enchanted realm falls for a remarkably unlucky woman. She pitched her upcoming novel at the same time as The Knight and the Moth, after her Shepherd King duology came out. Her agent suggested that she release her two gothic duologies first to build her brand before making a tonal shift.
“It is far more cozy,” Gillig teases. “There are not the world-is-going-to-end sort of stakes. The kingdom is not ill-balanced. There is not a life-and-death situation on hand. I wanted a break from that. I wanted lower stakes. I wanted more situational comedy. And I think, honestly, when I was writing the Gargoyle, it was a bit of an experiment for me, leaning into more whimsy and seeing what it would be like to infuse more comedy into something. And I found I also really enjoy that.”
It’s also more romance-heavy compared to her past fantasy-focused duologies. “You can tell that I like writing the romance, even if it’s subplot in the books that I currently have, so I wanted to lean a little more romance [in] more of the plot,” she says. “I’m lucky that I have amazing readers. I don’t think they would complain if I wrote another dark fantasy duology, but I myself need to kind of stretch my wings a bit just to see what I can do, see what I lean towards.”
The Knave and the Moon, Available Now
