Paper Dragon Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 978-1-941151-14-3
Fantasy Romance, 2017

Fate’s Call is a short and simple story set in some fantasy land with the usual lords and lady types. Refreshingly, both the hero and the heroine are of strictly working class. Unfortunately, the whole thing is as sweet and cutesy as a Care-Bears episode centered around how we must be kind to people who are hurt… wholesome and child-like, that is, until the main characters get naked and start going at it.

Erron, our heroine, tries to flee her father, who physically and sexually abuses her ever since she was a young girl, and in the process, she encounters Jarek, a tanner. Despite her being frantic with fear and he brimming with concern, both manage to point out to me the various physical attributes of the other person so that I can look forward to the impending joining of the beautiful and the bold. Alas, he unknowingly lets her be dragged back with her father, although he senses that something isn’t right and decides to pursue after them.

This is a sweet and simple rescue fantasy, and the way the main characters are portrayed, I think I can be forgiven if I pegged Erron as in her mid-teens and Jarek a year or two older, because there is a simplistic linearity to their thoughts and actions that makes them feel more at home in a young adult story. Even then, it’s hard to take this story seriously because, in the need to make this one a romance, the author clumsily has the main characters noticing how hot the other is at times when they should be too distracted by other things. Worse, Erron jumps from fear to “Take me now! The readers need a sex scene or they will ask for a refund!” so abruptly that I can only wonder whether someone has slipped some horny powder into her drink or something.

This is a short story, and actually, I feel that it’s actually okay for what it is, provided one can overlook the uncomfortable mingling of sex as well as abuse and Sunday morning cartoon cuteness. Even when I can do that, I still feel that the romance ends up getting in the way. If the main characters had been allowed to interact in a more organic manner, with romance developing more slowly and more believably in the aftermath, Fate’s Call would have been a much better read. In its current form, the rush to a happily ever after feels contrived, and hence the emotional core of the story never once seems real or believable.