Reviewed by Jess

TITLE: Dancing With Calamity

AUTHOR: Sorcha Rowan

PUBLISHER: Self-published

LENGTH: 26 pages

RELEASE DATE:  June 28, 2018

BLURB:

Calamity Jane has one last chance to pay off her debt. Her mechanical arm is no substitute for the flesh and blood one she was born with, but she can’t afford to lose it to her creditor. She must travel to Rapids City and recruit a beautiful dancer for Madame Shine’s brothel. She doesn’t count on falling in love with the woman at first sight.

REVIEW:

I like westerns, and I love a lady with a bad-ass mechanical appendage. Most of this story is just all-out steamy, sexy, rowdy fun between two hard-living women in the time of the Old West. It isn’t perfect, but for a very short read, it’s a party.

From the start, Calamity is a force to be reckoned with. She does what she wants and usually gets away with it. She travels as a man, but when people find out she’s female, she’s just as formidable. When she’s tasked with recruiting a sword-wielding dancer, we’re just as enamored as she is with Yamini. The women are both strong, cunning, and independent in their own ways, and together, they’re deadly. When Yamini takes charge and orders Calamity to strip down and bathe while they talk business, the heat between them is palpable.

I don’t think this needed to be a story about Calamity Jane. The hallmarks of this particular incarnation—a weaponized mechanical arm and a female dancer for a lover—are completely fictional, bearing no resemblance to anything actually recorded about Calamity Jane. It would be just as interesting with an original character. Maybe the author thought we’d be able to picture the story easier if we had a historical figure in mind.

I think this will be a hard sell for some lesfic fans. The story begins with an explicit F/M sex scene, and there’s an undercurrent of exotification of Yamini, the beautiful, ethnically-ambiguous dancer Calamity is sent to recruit. The story takes place in a pretty unforgiving time and place, but it still needed just a touch of softness to make it a really pleasing little romantic interlude.

RATING: 

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