Lucas Blogs About The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry

This book has everything! Pocket watches, spiders, pistols, that thing where you keep a reanimated mouse skeleton as a pet.

So, what's this book's de—Oh, it's a sequel to that book you blogged about last May.

You mean Unnatural Magic? Well, kinda.

Whaddya mean kinda? How can something "kinda" be a sequel?

Well, it is by the same writer, C.M. Waggoner, and it does take place in the same world, and one of the characters is the daughter of Jeckran and Tsira from Unnatural Magic.

You're doing a very bad job of convincing me that this isn't a sequel.

I can see that now, yes. It's just that the story doesn't really have anything much to do with the story of Unnatural Magic. Both stories are entirely self-contained. You don't need to have read Unnatural Magic to make sense of The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry.

 Gotcha. But that title's a bit of a mouthful.

It is. Anyway, let's jump in. The story starts with Dellaria Wells — usually called "Delly" — in a bit of a fix. Two fixes actually: 1) she's behind on her rent and her landlord is threatening to curse her with seeping pustules if she can't pay it back, and B) her mam is back on drugs and living in a slum. Fortunately, while briefly detained by the police — a not uncommon occurrence in her life — she finds a sudden opportunity for employment. You see, Delly is a fire witch and is recruited as a bodyguard for a wealthy young woman who is withdrawing for a traditional period of isolation before her wedding. So Wells joins a group of fellow female magic users, including Abstentia Dok, a student at the prestigious Weltsir magic school, and Winnifer Cynallumwynsurai — Winn Cynallum to the brevitaciously inclined — the aforementioned offspring of characters from Unnatural Magic. Winn is a quarter-troll debutante who likes to play at adventuring. There's also the bird-loving necromancer Mrs. Totham and her daughter Ermintrude who can use magic to turn into a pig. As they fend off murder attempts and try to find the would-be killer's identity, Delly and Winn begin a courtship, Dok warms up to her new companions, and Mrs. Totham befriends the resurrected corpse of a mouse whom she names Buttons  and who may or may not be possessed by the spirit of a powerful sorcerer.

Okay, sounds more or less like the kinda book you'd like.

It does, doesn't it?

Yeah, so did you?

Did I what?

Like it?

Yeah. I'm actually a big fan of not-quite-sequels, you know as a concept. Because they let an author grow an imagined world or explore different aspects of a character while still providing the reader with a complete story. For example, while Unnatural Magic takes place in what you might call a Regency/Early Victorian-ish setting, The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry takes place a few decades later, and Waggoner drops little hints here and there about how world has changed since then. And while the characters from the first book were all solidly middle or upper class, this one features a protagonist who is essentially a cockney.

The author doesn't write her dialogue phonetically does she?

No, it's communicated more in the way people treat her, and slang. Although she does have a habit of constructing words like "daintitudinous." And because the third person narration is tied so closely to her perspective, these kinds of constructions will slip in here and there. I thought the first one was a typo, to be honest, but by the second one I had caught wise and honestly, that was a big source of humor in the book. Oh, did I mention that this what you might call a fantasy-crime-romantic comedy?

I don't think you did, no.

In any case, the novel is as much about the developing relationship between Delly and Winn as it is about the Ruthless Ladies' (please note, they are not referred to as such in the book, I have decided to call them that for the purposes of this blog post) attempts to solve the mystery.

Okay, so if it's such a genre blender, does Waggoner handle the various aspects of the story equally well?

For the most part. I do think that the book drags a bit in the middle. Particularly after they first come back from the countryside and don't know where to start looking for leads on the attempted murderer's whereabouts. However, because her cast is so well-defined and she writes their banter quite well (the title actually comes from a crack Dok makes about not having read The Ruthless Young Lady's Guide to Felonious Wizardry when they're trying to figure out how to build a drug lab), Waggoner manages to keep the reader's interest even when the plot meanders a little. That said, the characters and their emerging relationships are endearing enough that she has room to let the plot wander a little.

So the romance?

It worked for me. Part of Delly's character is that she's constantly been told by society that she's not good enough on account of her lower class upbringing and accent (for example, she was actually admitted to Weltsir as part of a scholarship program meant to prove that the lower social ranks aren't fit for academic wizardry), and she feels guilty that one of the reasons she's attracted to Winn is financial stability. In any case, they eventually become a cute enough couple for the other characters to be annoyed with them. So, you know it works. Oh, and I should mention that it is pretty funny.

You did say it was a comedy.

I did. In any case, it frequently made me lol what with the malapropisms or Mrs. Totham fawning over the increasingly decrepitated Buttons (I'll admit, when I first typed out the word "decrepitated" I thought that spell check would object to it). Waggoner also manages to convey action cleanly and a sense of urgency that kept me turning the pages. So, overall, I'd say that this was a pretty fun book.

Okay, are we done?

What do you have somewhere else to be?

Not especially.

Do you want to talk about something else?

Not especially.

Okay, we're done.

The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner, Ace Books trade paperback edition, January 2021, 371 pages, pairs well with coffee, dainties, and felonious wizardry

Links:

Here's the author's website, if you're into that kinda thing.