SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner: https://t.co/wPjI5mVLwo
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 9, 2021
Short Review: 9.5 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): When gutterwitch (Fire/Melting Things) Della Wells sees an advert for a bodyguard job for "Female persons of Magical Ability" she thinks first of easy money and maybe of finding a rich lady to attach herself to, but instead finds adventure and...love?
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 9, 2021
2/3
The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry is a stand-alone sequel to C.M. Waggoner's Unnatural Magic (which I reviewed here). A reader does not need to read the prior book to enjoy this one, as while it takes place in the same world, it takes place a generation later such that the prevailing cultural atmosphere of the world as changed a little bit, and prior knowledge will reward a reader with easter eggs and small moments of recognition but nothing more. I enjoyed Unnatural Magic myself for its characters quite a bit, especially its romantic pairing of a troll & human-soldier, but found the story's attempt at a greater plot (particularly a mystery) to not work quite as well. So I was interested to see how the sequel would do, especially after a review I read suggested it would be more character focused than its predecessor.
And the book is a lot more focused than its predecessor, featuring just a single point of view protagonist, and a cast of women at its core who are so great and tremendously fun as the story goes quickly from beginning to conclusion. The great romance elements of the first book are back and are tremendous as our fire witch from the slums tries to figure out the half-troll (daughter of the first book's romance) fighter/illusionist at first for the sake of money....and then because she actually develops feelings, and well, I loved it a lot. I read this book at a time I really needed something to cheer me up, and this book definitely did the trick, as it is filled with wit, humor and charm and I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Note: Again, you do not need to read Unnatural Magic to enjoy this book, which I stress because I really want people to read this one.
---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Dellaria "Delly" Wells is a low class, no good gutter-witch - a half educated one with a really strong talent for fire and melting things, but a gutter-witch nonetheless, one who can barely keep herself ahead of the constables with the small cons she does for money. Her mom is even worse, addicted to the drip, and she's behind on her rent, and everything seems to be tumbling down in her life. And then she sees an advertisement looking for ladies with magical abilities to bodyguard a high class woman - a "Clanner" - on a trip to her betrothed, for pay that would solve all her worries. All Delly will have to do is act nothing like the gutter witch she is, protect the girl who presumably can't be all that threatened, and she'll be back on her feet.
But well, things quickly become more complicated than she could've thought. Her party of bodyguards includes an old woman necromancer, her animal girl daughter, a pair of seniors in wizarding school, and Winn, a high class half-troll girl with a talent for illusions and fisticuffs who Delly can't keep her eyes off of...and who blushes awfully nicely when Delly makes small talk. Delly decides that Winn is her big chance - a girl she can get attached to for a lifetime of support - but soon begins to possibly develop feelings for this girl from a totally different world....feelings that won't matter if their charge's attacker, who wields strange necromantic power, doesn't kill them all first.
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Unlike its predecessor, The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry is the story of a single protagonist - Delly Wells - and told entirely from her own point of view. The world we see here has moved on a little bit from that of Unnatural Magic - whereas in that book we saw gender discrimination in a protagonist not being let into wizarding school because she was a commoner girl, here our entire main cast is made up of women with various magical talents, and nothing is particularly surprising about it (notably the idea that the girl they're bodyguarding needs to be in seclusion until marriage is considered old fashioned as well). It's also a queer-normative world, where Delly being bisexual or her having a relationship with another girl (Winn) is completely unremarkable.
What it isn't and what drives a lot of the story, is a world without class stratification. Delly is a girl from the streets, a commoner, who is looked down by the higher classes - the clanners as she calls them. Part of Delly's magical knowledge comes from her being part of a joke by a noble class man who put her and 4 other common girls into magic school to show they couldn't handle it (without providing any support of course). And so Delly has to struggle for her wages, to help her mother - who is addicted to drugs - and considers cons as the only way to keep getting by, taking more and more risks along the way....despite her clearly having just as much magical and other capability as the higher class lady wizards in the story. Meanwhile, the higher classes have exactly the same faults as the commoners they disdain - they do drugs, hell they might even be responsible for pushing the drugs on the street, they commit crimes, etc. with the only difference between them being they can buy off the police to get away with it all and have the cash to eat while others around them starve. And despite that becoming apparent, and despite the knowledge of that, Delly and other lower class people presumably can't help but feel lower and not worthy of the love of the Clanners like Winn.
In all this world we get our adventure and our cast and it's an amazing cast. Besides Delly and Winn, who I'll get to in a second, you have Abstentia Dokk, high class senior at wizarding school who is a bit uptight high class...and yet willing to embark on a dangerous scheme as the adventure progresses; you have Mrs. Totham, an elderly body scientist, which is the classy way of saying necromancer, and her adopted daughter Ermintrude, who can transform into a feral pig. Mrs. Totham as the elderly necromancer lady really is a standout here, as is a later member of the party, Buttons a necromantically revived mouse.
But the stars of this story are Delly and Winn and the romance that blossoms between them, and they're so so good. Delly as mentioned before has scrabbled to survive, and first sees Winn as a "Prospect" she can latch onto for money and good living...before falling in love and starting to worry that she isn't good enough for Winn's high class life. But as a girl who lives on the street she's quick thinking and prone to dangerous risk taking yet still truly caring, not just about Winn, but about her drug-addled mother all despite her mother never actually providing any loving support for her. And Winn, as the half troll daughter of Unnatural Magic's protagonists (who cameo at the end), is in many ways a clear contrast - willing to go on this adventure knowing that she doesn't want to be simply a prim lady but also knowing she has the backing of her family in case things goes wrong and thus is a lot more conservative in the romance department than Delly. But she again has a strong good heart and when combined with Delly their cute advances are just so so sweet, from beginning to end. There isn't really an explicit scene in the romance (it stops before it gets there), but it's so cute as it goes along.
That romance, plus the rollicking fun adventure with lots of wit, fun, and swerves just makes this book a clear winner that I'd highly recommend. None of its individual parts are super standouts, but when combined together, it's just a blast to read and highly enjoyable and I cannot wait to read whatever Waggoner has next after this.
Unlike its predecessor, The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry is the story of a single protagonist - Delly Wells - and told entirely from her own point of view. The world we see here has moved on a little bit from that of Unnatural Magic - whereas in that book we saw gender discrimination in a protagonist not being let into wizarding school because she was a commoner girl, here our entire main cast is made up of women with various magical talents, and nothing is particularly surprising about it (notably the idea that the girl they're bodyguarding needs to be in seclusion until marriage is considered old fashioned as well). It's also a queer-normative world, where Delly being bisexual or her having a relationship with another girl (Winn) is completely unremarkable.
What it isn't and what drives a lot of the story, is a world without class stratification. Delly is a girl from the streets, a commoner, who is looked down by the higher classes - the clanners as she calls them. Part of Delly's magical knowledge comes from her being part of a joke by a noble class man who put her and 4 other common girls into magic school to show they couldn't handle it (without providing any support of course). And so Delly has to struggle for her wages, to help her mother - who is addicted to drugs - and considers cons as the only way to keep getting by, taking more and more risks along the way....despite her clearly having just as much magical and other capability as the higher class lady wizards in the story. Meanwhile, the higher classes have exactly the same faults as the commoners they disdain - they do drugs, hell they might even be responsible for pushing the drugs on the street, they commit crimes, etc. with the only difference between them being they can buy off the police to get away with it all and have the cash to eat while others around them starve. And despite that becoming apparent, and despite the knowledge of that, Delly and other lower class people presumably can't help but feel lower and not worthy of the love of the Clanners like Winn.
In all this world we get our adventure and our cast and it's an amazing cast. Besides Delly and Winn, who I'll get to in a second, you have Abstentia Dokk, high class senior at wizarding school who is a bit uptight high class...and yet willing to embark on a dangerous scheme as the adventure progresses; you have Mrs. Totham, an elderly body scientist, which is the classy way of saying necromancer, and her adopted daughter Ermintrude, who can transform into a feral pig. Mrs. Totham as the elderly necromancer lady really is a standout here, as is a later member of the party, Buttons a necromantically revived mouse.
But the stars of this story are Delly and Winn and the romance that blossoms between them, and they're so so good. Delly as mentioned before has scrabbled to survive, and first sees Winn as a "Prospect" she can latch onto for money and good living...before falling in love and starting to worry that she isn't good enough for Winn's high class life. But as a girl who lives on the street she's quick thinking and prone to dangerous risk taking yet still truly caring, not just about Winn, but about her drug-addled mother all despite her mother never actually providing any loving support for her. And Winn, as the half troll daughter of Unnatural Magic's protagonists (who cameo at the end), is in many ways a clear contrast - willing to go on this adventure knowing that she doesn't want to be simply a prim lady but also knowing she has the backing of her family in case things goes wrong and thus is a lot more conservative in the romance department than Delly. But she again has a strong good heart and when combined with Delly their cute advances are just so so sweet, from beginning to end. There isn't really an explicit scene in the romance (it stops before it gets there), but it's so cute as it goes along.
That romance, plus the rollicking fun adventure with lots of wit, fun, and swerves just makes this book a clear winner that I'd highly recommend. None of its individual parts are super standouts, but when combined together, it's just a blast to read and highly enjoyable and I cannot wait to read whatever Waggoner has next after this.
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