C. M. Waggoner

Hard-drinking petty thief Dellaria Wells is down on her luck in the city of Leiscourt -- again. Then she sees a want ad for a female bodyguard, and she fast-talks her way into the high-paying job. Along with a team of other women, she's meant to protect a rich young lady from mysterious assassins. At first Delly thinks the danger is exaggerated, but a series of attacks shows there's much to fear. Then she begins to fall for Winn, one of the other bodyguards, and the women team up against a mysterious, magical foe who seems to have allies everywhere.

The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry

Sparks fly in this enchanting fantasy novel from the author of Unnatural Magic when a down-and-out fire witch and a young gentlewoman join forces against a deadly conspiracy. Dellaria Wells, petty con artist, occasional thief, and partly educated fire witch, is behind on her rent in the city of Leiscourt—again. Then she sees the “wanted” sign, seeking Female Persons, of Martial or Magical ability, to guard a Lady of some Importance, prior to the celebration of her Marriage. Delly fast-talks her way into the job and joins a team of highly peculiar women tasked with protecting their wealthy charge from unknown assassins. Delly quickly sets her sights on one of her companions, the confident and well-bred Winn Cynallum. The job looks like nothing but romance and easy money until things take a deadly (and undead) turn. With the help of a bird-loving necromancer, a shapeshifting schoolgirl, and an ill-tempered reanimated mouse named Buttons, Delly and Winn are determined to get the best of an adversary who wields a twisted magic and has friends in the highest of places.

Gillian Rose

3.5 stars

This book had a similar humor and style to Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series and Theodora Goss's The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. It was quite fun to read, even though there were times I got confused about what was going on. Dellaria was wonderful, as was Winn, and I loved seeing their relationship.

grace richards

3.5,, the concept for this book was really good but it felt like we did nothing till like the last 5 chapters of this book

emily

magical sapphics and elaborate world building will ALWAYS hit / 4.5 stars

Alexandria Wilkie

I laughed my way through a lot of this book, so am rating it highly for that. I'm not sure if other people would have the same experience. For one thing, big ol' content warning on this one for substance addiction.

It is really fun to see the same world as book one, but from the point of view of a character who is quite pointedly from a much lower class than all the viewpoint characters from the prior book, though. Also I liked the character and relationship building, and while some of the plot points I could see coming, it definitely was still an interesting story with some developments I didn't anticipate. To some extent, I also appreciate books where parental figures are failures of one stripe or another. It's a really different way you end up navigating the world in those cases, and I appreciated how some of this rang true for me, even though that's a sort of depressing thing to say (and I'm not saying I have a parent just like this character, just that some of the patterns were unfortunately relatable).

Anyhow. Would definitely read more by this author for sense of humor and wordplay that are right up my alley.

Jennifer

I've read Unnatural Magic and was intrigued by its unique wizard concepts. C.M. Waggoner's sophmore effort continues her quirky style, based in the same fictional world set in the debut novel. If Waggoner's debut explores a big tent of human themes, the sophmore effort The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry focuses much more on the intriguing romance between Delly and Winn.

So there are a few reasons why I had this on my TBR and I think these are also the best parts of the book.

+ Concepts. The concepts are rather interesting. As I've noticed, the worldbuilding of The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry is based on the one from Unnatural Magic. I thought the ideas in Waggoner's debut were quite creative and had potentials, so it's nice that some of these materials are also featured in her sophmore effort. For example the witches, trolls, and the Victorian England-inspired world. 

+ Characters. This book consists of a cast of diverse and mostly female characters. In terms of characterisation, I think the author invested quite a lot in fleshing out Delly's and Winn's personalities. I personally found that the fleshing out paid off for Winn's part - I found her both nuanced and pretty likeable. I also think the playful relationship Delly had with Winn created a few moments of comic relief.

Unfortunately, this is probably all I could say were well done in The Ruthless Lady's Guide fo Wizardry. I feel like this book also had the potential but something's missing and I didn't enjoy it as much as I would given the unique concepts. I'll try to highlight a few things that I didn't think worked for me.

- Worldbuilding: Okay, so I haven't mentioned much about the quality of worldbuilding when I reviewed Unnatural Magic. I thought the worldbuilding in the debut was okay - but not excellent. It's definitely inspired by Victorian England but there were a lot of missing pieces left unanswered. These open holes in the worldbuilding weren't closed up in the sophmore as even less about the fictional world were being mentioned. This is an issue because I had difficulties following through the plot (and this is given I had already known some of the worldbuilding introduced in Unnatural Magic).

- Magic system: The magic system suffered from the same pitfall as the worldbuilding. I felt that there weren't much explored with the fantasy / magical aspects of the book. And when it was introduced, I was like around 1/3 through the novel. Personally, I found this (+ the worldbuilding) rather incoherent. As someone who's been expecting the magic in the book to be the fun factor, I was pretty let down.

- Main character: I can see some character development in Delly (and I do think C.M. Waggoner did quite a decent job in creating opportunities for both Delly and Winn to grow throughout the novel), but I didn't find Delly particularly likeable despite her feisty & sometimes playful temperament. Personally I have a pretty mixed experience when the main character has an unreliable narrative, so this is most likely a personal thing. While I feel bad for Delly's upbringing and I understand how being brought up in a toxic household leads to serious consequences, I feel like her poor habits were not properly justified in the backstory (which is also difficult to follow through) so I feel like some opportunities of proper redemption / change weren't fully realised.

- Content / language use: This is the main reason I tipped the rating down to 2.5/5. I didn't really like the novel because there are too much triggering content for me to find this enjoyable. This is partially because I wasn't aware of all of the potential triggers beforehand.

This book contains a large amount of following content triggers: alcohol, vomiting, drugs, abuse, hospital visits, nudity, fire accidents, and weapons 

In terms of the language use, there is quite a lot of swearing and invented words to portray Delly's narrative. I found this occasionally humorous but I didn't feel really comfortable given the large amount of content triggers (some of these happen to be triggering to me).

Given the concent warnings above and the language use, I have shelved this under "18-plus".

Nevertheless, I found C.M. Waggoner's wizard concept & characters quite unique (The worldbuilding is however quite lacking so it might be useful to refresh on what's being introduced in Unnatural Magic first beforehand). Waggoner's sophmore effort contains a pretty playful relationship so if you're into slow-burn LGBT+ romance featuring wizards, this is still worth checking out! 

(2.5 stars out of 5)

Linda Quintanilla

When I read the book title, I was immediately thrilled to read this book. And after reading the book summary, I knew that I was going to love it because I always love reading about empowered women falling in love or building their dreams. 
So I had expectations when I started The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry. And boy, I have a lot to say. I do not want to bash but I was very disappointed when I finished this book. I immediately thought I could not finish this book. It was a struggle from the start. I don't know why but I just could not connect to the character at all. Like I was trying my hardest in any way but I could not. And from there, it went downhill. And the romance was barely there. Next time, I need to lower my expectation when I start discovering new books from their titles or covers.

Samantha Bass

I was really excited for this book going into it. The first chapter, we meet Delly, a drunk fire witch who can't seem to get through life without trouble knocking on her door. But, when she gets an opportunity to act as a bodyguard for a rich young lady preparing to marry, things look like they're going to turn around.

The first chapter had me rolling with laughter. In fact, the whole book had this edge of comedy that I really liked. I can really appreciate when a fantastical book can also be comical. It helped lighten up the mood, especially with any scene containing Button, the skeletal, spirit infected rat. But one thing that really hindered my reading was the extremely long chapters.

I'm not sure what it is about adult fiction, but there's no reason for me to read 10% of the book in some cases in one chapter. It dragged the book along, even during intense action scenes, and it felt like everything was going on with no break.

Excluding the pacing issue, I loved the plot, I loved the characters, and I really liked the humor. I think that's the biggest thing that saved this book because each moment had me grinning or laughing throughout. Without it, I feel like I would have been sucked into the endless chapters and gotten lost amongst the onslaught of events happening all at once.

If the chapters were just a little shorter, I think I would have loved this book! But, I have to give it a 3 // 5 stars for the dragging pace and slow plot.

Paige Morgan

Last year I was delighted and surprised by Waggoner's Unnatural Magic because she managed to blend a murder mystery with a slow-burn romance, and just ... a surprising amount of emotional richness and sensibility into her characters, and make everything fit together very naturally. And I'm happy to report that she's managed the same feat in the Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry. I've seen narratives about down-and-out con artists trying to land a scheme to survive, but I've never *felt* one the way that I felt this one, as Waggoner introduced us to Dellaria and her plight: earn enough money to pay her overdue rent and avoid a "hard promise" (a curse that will lead to seeping pustules, "mostly on the face"), while also finding a way to rescue the drug-addicted mother who has rarely, if ever, come through for her. Dellaria may seem too good to be true, but she's also an opportunist, which is why the prospect of pursuing higher class Wynn as a marriage prospect seems like a good idea to get her the wealth and security she needs. Of course, things don't go quite to plan.

Though I can't go into detail without spoiling the plot, Waggoner excels at showing a wide range of ruthless women -- in good and bad ways. Dellaria and Wynn are sweet, and full of heart, and yet, not so much to the point of being saccharine. And Waggoner isn't afraid to twist the knife in exacting the consequences of prior actions.

Finally, Waggoner's "Buttons" is a uniquely odd character who, frankly, shouldn't work, but somehow does, and Buttons and his bonging will stay with me for a long time after. I really hope that we continue to see more set in this world -- not least because I want to see Onna and Loga again, even if it's just a cameo!

The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry

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