The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry follows Dellaria "Delly" Wells, a lower class down-on-her luck fire-witch / con artist who finds herself dangerously close to being evicted when she happens to find out about an interesting opportunity when she sees an advert looking for "Female Persons, of Martial or Magical ability, to guard a Lady of some Importance, prior to the celebration of her Marriage." When she finds herself jailed for some petty offence, she uses the upcoming job interview as a way to get herself released and, what originally was just a way to get out of jail becomes a real opportunity to make some much-needed money that could help her keep a roof over her head and maybe even enable her to take care of her drug-addict mother and get her cleaned up.
In addition to finding gainful employment, Delly also finds that one of the other women responding to the ad is Winn, a female troll Clanner, which means high-society and big bucks. Delly finds herself with dreams and schemes of seducing Winn and getting Winn to household her, elevating Delly's status and leaving her well-off and carefree, in the lap of luxury. Things seem to be on track, at least in that department, but what happens when she finds herself actually caring for Winn?
The backdrop of a cultural tradition of keeping a bride away from any males for a certain amount of time before her wedding makes for a natural premise to assemble an all female team of wizards and fighters and when the "babysitting" job turns out to be more dangerous than expected, the gang finds themselves continuing on together in a further adventure that has them in the criminal underground of Leiscourt - somewhere not completely unfamiliar to Delly, but dealing with people that Delly would typically avoid.
Along their adventures, the girls will encounter dangerous drug lords, magical metal abominations, and more than a few disquieting run-ins with necromancy or "body science" as the necromancers prefer to call it.
Having enjoyed Unnatural Magic, I was quite pleased to read another story set in the same areas and look forward to more of them in the future. While the parametric magic system is touched on more in that book, as far as I could tell, there is no real required reading order imposed on these two books, so you could feel free to start with The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry and if you find you really like it, you could then check out Unnatural Magic, or you could read Unnatural Magic first, as I did. Either way, I would recommend them as entertaining reads and look forward to more stories set in this world from C.M. Waggoner.
