DNF at 70%

I rarely DNF so late in the game, but I'm struggling to get through this one and really just don't care how things wrap up. The early part of the book was fantastic- pseudo-Victorian fantasy with magic and a quirky, bisexual thief turned body guard? So fun! And it was...until it wasn't. From about 25% on it was just so incredibly dull, moving at a snails pace without any real mystery or conflict to drive the plot forward. I like the idea of this slow burn sapphic relationship between the MC and a half-troll woman from the gentry, but while I like the characters it wasn't enough to keep me from getting bogged down in the repetition and minute details. (cleaning an apartment, making breakfast, meeting at a coffee shop, cleaning an old building, eating lunch, going to the bathhouse, falling asleep, drinking coffee...) For a book about magic and a dangerous drug ring, it's remarkably boring. Which is unfortunate.

This book is just plain fun! A queer bodyguard romance full of magic, necromancy, adventure, and false identities, yes please! Initially I found the writing style slightly off-putting, even the narration is worded to sound like a speaker from this magical world who doesn’t necessarily abide by all of the niceties of common English grammar, but it only took about a chapter to get used to and then it just served to make the book more immersive.

Since finishing The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry I learned that this is the second book Waggoner set in this world. However, I never felt I was missing any details, Ruthless Lady’s can definitely stand alone.

If you’re looking for a queer friendly, gender nonconforming fantasy to escape into, The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry is a great choice.

A great read for those who are fond of magic and mayhem in a setting without modern elements. There are tea rooms and coaches and inns with stables. The main character lives in a rented room and is currently between low-paying jobs, so she is thinking of ways to make some quick cash. As she thinks, "Lacking nerve was a problem for women who had servants to fan their foreheads after they swooned on the chaise." Delly isn't one of those ladies, but she hires out to protect one. The all female bodyguard contingent will accompany the young lady to her future in-laws' house to await the day of her marriage. Each of the women has skills such as weapons training, necromancy, and other magical or physical abilities.

What seems like it will be a mildly boring journey to the future home of the bride turns out to be a perplexing mystery. There are attacks by mechanical creatures powered by magic, attempted murder, actual murder, drug dealers, long lost mothers, disguises, and enough complications to make one wish for a quiet corner and cup of tea to sort it all out. Sadly, no one plans to give the guards any time to sit and think.

Between the intriguing look at the magic within this world (fire, illusions, necromancy, chemicastry, etc.), and the strange mix of social classes and their interactions, there is a lot to take in. Readers will be pulled deeper and deeper into the world of Delly and her companions.

DNF at 70%.

I don't know if it was the writing, the pacing, my mood or what, but despite being one of my most highly anticipated reads of 2021, this fell flat. I can't believe I pushed through until 70% and DNF'd, and that I didn't push through for the rest, but after a several-day slog where I was skimming more than reading, I had to call it quits.

Victorian writing—much less pseudo fantasy Victorian writing—is a hard sell for me, and I'm not certain if I would have requested this or put it on my TBR had I known. However, I LOVE f/f fantasy, although I was scratching my head over the randomness of trolls in an otherwise fairly standard Victorian-esque fantasy setting (which makes me nervous for the companion novel, which I bought and have not read yet).

I enjoyed the characters, but the pacing felt super off. It went from going at a good clip until the grand reveal, and then it became nothing but waiting, practicing, waiting, looking for mam, waiting, bathhouses, a convoluted drug-making plot, more waiting, much angst with Winn, a weird mouse, and more waiting. About 30% of it was waiting or talking about what they were going to do and planning, and it was just so damn boring.

I did appreciate the worldbuilding, which had some unique twists alongside the standard mock-Victorian, and the commentary on polite young ladies, privilege and poverty.

Maybe I would have enjoyed this if I was in a better mindset, but I needed something that connected me to the writing better, and this wasn't it.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review

Dellaria Wells is a stubborn gutterwitch who's had her fair share of hardships in life. All she wants to do is earn enough money to provide for herself and help her mother live a better life in the country. When she sees an add for a female bodyguard, she thinks her luck is about to change. If it wasn't for the fact that she's completely inexperienced. Delly quickly fast-talks her way into the job, and finds herself assigned to protect a rich young lady from a mysterious assassin. At first, Delly shrugs off the danger, believing it to be exaggerated, but she soon learns that the threat is very real, and it's up to her and the rest of the guards, including the charmingly good-looking Winn, to get to the bottom of it before it's too late.

I was really intrigued by the premise of this, and thought it had such potential. A group of misfit magical women banding together to stop a mystical threat? It sounds like it's going to be a wild ride from beginning to end, but unfortunately, it just didn't hit the mark for me. I couldn't get into the writing style and didn't connect to any of the characters. I was actually quite bored throughout and found myself skim reading most of it just to finish. The romance aspect between Dellaria and Winn was cute, but I think relied a little too heavily on the sexual tension. While I do see the appeal of this book and can appreciate how original it was, it just ended up not being for me.

This story takes place in the fictional city of Leiscourt and stars a youma woman named Dellaria Wells. Delly is a fire witch, a con woman, and down and out. She needs money to make her rent when she sees an ad for Female Persons of Martial or Magical Ability to guard a Lady of Some Importance.

Getting hired on seems like a way out of her current financial difficulties. She is part of a crew consisting of two ladies with magical talent, a body scientist and her daughter Ermintrude who turns into a pig, and a high class girl who is part troll and is also skilled in martial arts.

Delly takes one look at the crew and decides that Winn Cynallum, the part troll girl, is her ticket to future financial security and determines to seduce her. But her courtship is interrupted by someone actually attempting to murder the lady she's supposed to be guarding. She uses her magical ability to burn the spider-like creatures who stage numerous attacks.

The bulk of the book concerns catching the villain and bringing her to justice. She is joined by the rest of the guards since, while she missed killing the lady, she did kill Ermintrude. Delly is mostly concerned with the reward that has been offered for bringing the villain to justice. She needs the money to help her mother get off the use of the latest drug of choice - red drip. Unfortunately, in order to track down the villain they have to turn into producers of red drip themselves because the villain is an addict and involved with the production of the drug.

Despite the ample use of dialect (which I hate), I enjoyed this story which was part mystery and part romance and featured an interesting main character and the girl who falls in love with her and helps her become her best self. I liked the various kinds of magic in the story and the general world building.

I really enjoyed this grittier side of life to Waggoners' world of wizardry. The dialect was fascinating and the scheme interesting! Cant wait to read more in the world.

Excellent. The dialogue was as much fun as the action! Thoroughly enjoyed it. Can’t wait for more!

I really wanted to like this book but there was something off putting about the slangy, overly clever narrative style that I never quite got over. The plot never really took off for me either, perhaps simply because it was often overtaken by the narrative affect and the efforts to world build from the POV of a single character who is not terribly worldly themselves.

I thoroughly enjoyed the world building in this book! Delly was such a character and the story moved so quickly. I couldn't put this book down; as soon as I finished it I ordered Unnatural Magic to read next. More from C. M. Waggoner please!

To be honest, I'd hoped for more humor here - but the language was off-putting and the plot was fairly predictable. I've rounded up from 2.5 stars because I enjoyed meeting Delly and Winn, and some of the ideas (like the marriage seclusion) were fun.

eARC provided by publisher via Netgalley.

Dellaria Wells is behind on her rent again. She needs money so she becomes part of a team to be sure the young woman they are transporting to her wedding arrives safe. Doesn't sound like a big job but it's not as easy as she thought.

Berkley and Net Galley let me read this book for review (thank you). It will be published the 12th of January.

Dellaria finds one of her companions attractive. Winn is attracted to her, too. Things start going wrong right away. One of the group is a shapeshifter and they find her dead. They stick together and hope to find the sister who killed her younger sister.

There are all sorts of magical things in this story. There's a dead mouse who comes back to life with the spirit of wizard in the body. When it starts decomposing the old lady boils it down to bones. The bony shape still has the wizard's spirit in it and it even talks.

Nothing is going well with their job or their quest. They visit an old house that has several locked rooms and begin lockpicking to see what's behind them.

They find themselves in the drug business on their quest for the truth. It's a scheme for getting information.

It's a fantasy all the way and I enjoyed the odd quirks and the unknowns the

This book found me at EXACTLY the right time. The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry is a delightful snarky mystery full of amazing strong women. I loved every minute.

Great fun with historical flavor! When their employer is almost murdered, a rag-tag band of bodyguards take on magicians and opium dealers in a rollicking fantasy tale set in an alternate-19th century London.

How delicious! The wording is crazy amazing! I started to write down some of my favorite lines but it got to be too much, but here are two:

(Delly) She filed it all away in the cluttered hatbox of her brain...

Mrs. Gotham was such a nice old thing, even if she was a necromancer engaged in dread communication with some ancient wizarding demon trapped within the skeleton of a mouse.

Love the Buttons character. Love Winn who I kept picturing as Miranda Hart ☺️.

This is how I can easily say that it is well written- I devoured it, even with my own brain greatly addled by the year 2020! I would love more of their story.

Can’t wait to start recommending this to everyone. Thanks for letting me read it!

This was a fun and imaginative book! I thought the worldbuilding was really unique and the relationships between the characters was really interesting and eventually very satisfying. I could see this being very popular with the YA and New Adult readers. Never thought I'd say I need a skeletal mouse sidekick, but here we are!

This was a flat-out, rollicking good adventure full of weird, eccentric, fun characters. You get a mystery, adventure and a romance set in a vaguely Victorian steampunk-ish world. It's the same world as CM Waggoner's first book, Unnatural Magic.

Delly is bawdy and always looking to scam someone but with a good heart and natural leadership under the vulgar, raggedy, and rough exterior. Her love interest is Winn, a half-troll, wellbred lady -pretty much Del's opposite with her refined ways and proper manners. Yet, I couldn't stop hoping for their relationship to work.

Lots of fun secondary characters including an older lady necromancer with a reanimated mouse named Buttons who communicates with BONGs - very reminiscent of the Death of Rats in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

I enjoyed this a great deal and look forward to reading more of CM Waggoner's books in the future.

What a fun, bawdy, rollicking romp of a read! Complete with Victorian, steampunk vibes, magic and necromancy, lots of hilariously proper cursing, and a sort of city-swashbuckling. Add in some genuine queer romance, an undead mouse skeleton called "Buttons" who "Bongs" forebodingly, and mechanical spider monsters, and this book is one of the greatest and most fun reads I've had in a while. I enjoyed every minute of this book, and the wittiness of the entire thing will make you laugh out loud many times over.

Delly is a petty thief that is hard up for cash. That is until she stumbles upon a job as a body guard for a Lady. What should be two weeks of work and more than enough money for Delly to pay her rent for a few months, turns into quite the adventure. The threats against her charge are real and after fighting a few mechanical spiders, Delly takes charge to avenge and capture those behind the attacks and murders. She may even find love in the process.

Delly is a complex character. She’s vulgar, unrepatriable, with entirely too loose morals. But she’s also loving, caring, and completely motivated by trying to keep her mum out of trouble. She’s basically your typical walking disaster. Honestly, I haven’t enjoyed a character as much, as much as I enjoyed Delly in a while. Her relationship with Winn was a joy to read about, and I really want a second book of the two of them out solving crimes or just trying to plan a vacation, something!

The language in the book at first, takes a bit to get use to. It’s a form of ole’ English with alot of terms specific to this magical world. My only negatives about this book is that I would have like a bit more knowledge around how the magic system works but maybe that is in the first book. I also found it to be a bit long and it’s under 400 pages. While the story itself is pretty fast paced, I thought there was a bit of fluff/extra talk that could have been removed without it impacting the story. Overall though I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

I have not read C.M. Waggoner’s first book Unnatural Magic but I want to now, especially since most reviewers have said they enjoyed Unnatural Magic more than this book. The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry is out in January.

I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof_books. Huge thank you to Berkley Publishing for my advanced reader copy.

This book was received as an ARC from Berkley Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

At first I was uncertain of what to expect from this book but as I read on, I got the more adventure fantasy vibe from the story and could not stop reading. The unlikely desire to join a band of misfit ladies to undergo the ultimate con artist missions involving the most complicated forms of wizadry (black magic). Delly is definitely a character we can relate to in being unafraid of trouble but when their is a group of ladies all trying to stir up chaos, all hell breaks loose. My hands were shaking at various times throughout the book and all I kept thinking was the fun our teen book club is going to have when we read this book.

We will consider adding this title to our YA collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.