A review by basil_touche
The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner

adventurous lighthearted mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I'll just say right off the bat that I found this book extremely disappointing. 

At first I was really into the victorian style of writing and a story involving magical female bodyguards with a sapphic romance on the side. But then the book dropped the bodyguarding aspect less than 100 pages into it and instead
focuses on the characters starting a drug ring to catch a murderer.
The blurb for this focused solely on the bodyguarding aspect and I wouldn't minded the change had it actually turned out to be anything interesting, but it just wasn't. I was expecting some deep governmental conspiracy that links in with the classism that the book features (I will give the book that it handles that well), not a narrative that doesn't really deliver anything.

Around five chapters focused on just the romance and
the building of the drug producing laboratory, it was a repetitive cycle of working on in the lab, luncheon, flirting and resting.
It was just so dragged out and unnecessary. All this meant that the ending was extremely rushed and we aren't even given a motive for the antagonist. All the characters are rather one dimensional as well, that by the end of it I didn't care about any of them or if the romance between the protagonist and the rich half-troll clanner worked out in the end.

It's a real shame as I love the idea of a fantasy book set in a victorian setting with the period appropriate writing style but this book just did not fullfill anything for me. Waste of time.
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