Pelota! by Sarah Black

Oliver is obsessed with all things Basque, and Jack is
Inuit in his heart. But even the ancient Basque and
Inuit managed to fall in love. In the abandoned Basque
whaling camp at Red Bay, off the coast of Labrador, the
two young researchers find their common ground in a
game of pelota.
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This story honestly should begin, "Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Oliver, who yearned to be a Basque…" It will put you into the right frame of mind for this story, which is sweet, at times LOL funny, and not really erotica, although Jack and Oliver do come together.

I just looked at that sentence. And I'm going to leave it. It really does go with the story.

The two main characters each want desperately to be part of cultures they weren't born into, and a small overlap gives them some common ground, and a reason to argue. It's kind of cute, if you're in a fairy tale frame of mind, and some bits of modernity stick in, just to remind you it's not long ago and far away. It's just trying to be a lot of things at once, which is kind of jarring.

The description of Indian politics got a coffee-spew LOL, and an orgasm with Inuit culture descriptions got a face palm. It's so good/bad I won't quote it, you're keyboard won't survive it. Two words. Musk ox.

I don't read a lot of Changeling Press stuff, but the offbeat characters sucked me in. Not so in that I don't notice 8 pages of picture, copywrite, scoldings, and information out of a 29 page pdf file, which then had 7 chapter divisions to boot. Really? Seven chapters in what has to max out at 5000 words? Where's the editor?

The ending is a proto-HEA in proper fairy tale style, but the last line = wonderful.