After reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, I knew that I wanted something a bit less intense and heavy for my next read. The Cloak and its Wizard seemed just zany enough to satisfy. This met my needs for a fun and mindless breather book, though I found that I was ready for the story to wrap up about 100 pages before the book itself did. Ultimately, if the idea of a snarky magic item telling the story appeals to you, this is likely at least worth a look.
Read if: you enjoy harmless chaos, you want something lighthearted and pulpy, like adults with functional lives outside of The Plot
Avoid if: you’re looking for something deep and meaningful, you’ll get annoyed with the phrase ‘my wizard’, you like twists to help move the story forward
Comparable Media: Dr. Strange, Striker V, Dad Magic
Elevator Pitch:
The Cloak of Sunset and Starlight hasn’t attached itself to a wizard for a full century. When an unusual initiate joins the Order of the Open Eye, however, he can’t resist. Veronica is a surgeon, and the only reason she’s a wizard at all is because she was immune to the mind-altering magic that the Order used to try and remove her memories of her brother’s death at the hands of a monster. The cloak and its new wizard quickly get on the wrong side of The Order, but things are also looking especially grim with an unusually large number of interplanar beings invading Earth.
What Worked for Me:
The Cloak sold itself as a narrator early on. It feels very much like how authors write cats; it likes to cause chaos, play pranks, and hates to be cooped up. Interspersed in the main plot were escapades of trying to avoid laundry machines, sneaking around hospitals, and causing havoc in the Order’s library. The Cloak’s priorities don’t line up with a human’s (including Veronica’s) which led to plenty of fun moments throughout the story. It was just enough of an alien perspective to be noticeable. Nicolet didn’t push the story into something more rigorous and experimental with the cloak’s POV, which I think was the right move here. The most grounded this story gets is Veronica’s medical experience, but the book mostly stuck to the slice-of-life sections of the story.
Nicolet did a wonderful job bringing the Twin Cities to life! It isn’t a surprise based on her penname, but seeing places like Uncle Hugo’s get mentioned or newcomers struggling with the pronunciation of Bde Maka Ska made me smile. While Veronica was opening portals up to places all over the world, the novel as a whole feels very honest to our cities. Reading about the experience of going somewhere warm only to return to the bitter cold of Minnesota winters in particular brought me joy.
What Didn’t Work for Me:
The schtick of this book is a good one; however, I think that the novelty of an animated cloak as our narrator lost its luster at around page 150. That doesn’t mean I disliked the story after that moment, but rather some of the plotting and pacing issues reared their head as I got used to the style of the story. This book follows a steady rising action structure, building slowly towards a climactic finisher. However, this book lacked the rapid pacing, seamless prose, or deep characterization that would have compensated for a relatively straightforward plot. Some shocking twists would have done the book good, I think. Once that initial shine of ‘ooh it’s a cloak!’ wore off, the book shifted from ‘great fun’ to ‘enjoyable enough’. I think a slimmer plot with a heavier focus on the zaniness of a maverick cloak as your protagonist would enamored me more. Not to be a broken record, but I think this story would have been better off as a novella.
Dare I also say that the world felt a bit generic? I know this was influenced by Dr. Strange, but I would have loved something a little more out-there than portals, telekinesis, and flight getting highlighted. The superhero community felt a bit more quirky than the secret order of mages, but it still felt interchangeable with other ‘not Marvel/DC’ superhero settings I’d seen. I just wish this had been pushed either further into the zany (to compliment the cloak protagonist schtick) or dramatic (to push more towards the action story angle), but in the end the supernatural elements just felt kind of forgettable?
Conclusion: This is a book with a really fun premise, but I don’t think it stuck the landing in execution. Good for something quick and lighthearted.
- Characters: 3
- Setting: 2
- Craft: 3
- Themes: 2
- Enjoyment: 3
Marked for Plot 