Review: Unnatural Magic

Unnatural Magic by C.M. Waggoner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read the (at time of writing) two books in this series in the wrong order, and it was interesting to compare the two of them. The worldbuilding definitely feels a level deeper in the second one ( The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry ), though it's not shallow here by any means, and the meaning of a lot of cultural ideas, like being "householded" (something between concubinage and adoption, depending) and the "releft" (apparently a holding place for souls awaiting reincarnation), are both clearer and made clear sooner in the second book. This one is still good, though, with engaging and varied characters, a compelling mystery to unravel, and plenty of magic to enjoy.

The characters range from the young and rather Regency-missish Onna, who is much better at magic than her culture is prepared to accept, to the pragmatic and foul-mouthed troll Tsira, along the way taking in an impoverished gentleman who (for excellent reasons) deserts from the army, where he's a junior officer; the greatest wizard in the world, who was raised in the theatre and is, consequently, extremely theatrical; and a number of minor characters met along the way, most of whom have something unusual about them to make them individual rather than a face in the crowd. Two groups of characters are separate for slightly more than half the book, and at first aren't even pursuing a common goal, but when they come together, both now investigating who is murdering trolls and cutting them up, they mesh well, and everything building up to that point is fully justified and important.

One thing I noticed about the other book, but didn't mention in my review, is that the majority of characters seem to be bisexual. We get more of a view of troll culture in this one, and it appears that gender and sexuality are a lot more optional for trolls than humans, though - possibly under the influence of the culturally dominant trolls - they're also more optional for humans as an accepted part of their culture than in the approximate equivalent time and place in our world (early-19th-century Europe).

I spotted the villain relatively early, not because they looked at all likely in the world of the story, but just because I know how stories work, and they were the person who would be the most dramatic choice. The pursuit of the solution to the mystery was interesting to follow anyway, and the villain's motivation was surprisingly relatable.

(view spoiler)[I did think that Onna's childhood friend's epiphany and apology were what I think of as an author's-wishful-thinking repentance, without much in the way of preparation within the story; it was the kind of scene a lot of people wish would occur more often in real life, but which seldom does. (hide spoiler)] However, this was a minor flaw.

Speaking of minor flaws, there were a few small glitches: a word repeated at the end of a sentence, the typo "string" for "sting," "lead" for "led," "laid" for "lay" and vice versa, an excess comma in the phrase "Of course I do," "straights" for "straits," and misplaced apostrophes in what should be the trolls' quarter and the wizards' club. I still give it my "well-edited" tag, because in a book this long that's a small number of mostly subtle errors.

Though at times more bloody and frequently raunchier than I usually prefer, these are excellently written books by a skilled author, and I enjoy them even when they're in territory I usually avoid.

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