Waggoner, C.M.: The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry

C.M. Waggoner’s The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry is set in the same world as her debut, Unnatural Magic, but stands alone perfectly well and is very possibly better, or at least, is much more smoothly paced. I enjoyed it immensely.

I like the start of the book’s blurb, so I shall borrow it for setup:

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.

(Winn is the daughter of two of the characters from Unnatural Magic. She is great and I love her. She is not, however, our POV character, because she is much too well-adjusted.)

This book is quite fun and funny, but also does a great job of being spooky, tense, and moving. A good deal of Delly’s life involves trying to care for her mom, who is addicted to laudanum, and all of that is appropriately fraught. And there’s Buttons the undead mouse who says "Bong," or more precisely makes "a deep, hollow boom, like a great bell tolling a few miles off"; he kind of encapsulates the whole range of the book, and I hope there is fanart. Finally, I very much enjoyed not only Delly and Winn’s romance, but all of the different relationships among the women on the team, who are a lovely varied and well-rounded lot. (Is it just me, or did Miss Absentia Dok practically jump up and down asking to be protagonist of another story?)

I think my only quibble is that one subplot falls off the page in the last couple of chapters, possibly to permit an unambiguously happy ending; though, to be fair, the ongoing complications of that subplot had been noted previously. Well, and I wrestled with how the book presents the morality of a significant portion of its plot, and ultimately decided that I thought it was fair; but others may differ, so if (ROT13 spoilers) znahsnpghevat nqqvpgvir qehtf sbe vyyvpvg qvfgevohgvba (/ROT13) is a hard no for you, you’ll want to give this book a pass.

Finally, the book has chapter titles, which I am a total sucker for.

Chapter 11: Wherein Dellaria Encounters an Extraordinary Quantity of Cherries, Does a Disagreeable Amount of Cleaning, and Deepens Her Involvement in Her Terrible Idea

I have no idea if these books are well-known or finding their audience, but I want them to be, so if they sound interesting, please check them out and report back.