Hmm, I'm really surprised that folks had a hard time realizing it was a parody (n.b., not satire). After 40+ episodes of Podcastle, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the editors' tastes, and they don't seem to include a lot of heaving bodices and fair elf-maidens on snowy unicorns. And for crying out loud...
golden arches? Eek!
Still, romance and bad fantasy are such easy targets for parody that the story didn't really succeed for me. I feel like I've heard it done before, and more successfully, even on Podcastle (Hallah Iron-Thighs, I'm looking at you, babe!) It seems like there are other subgenres that don't come in for parody as often but that could do with some fun poked at them. Sexxxy vampires; Harry Potter and the Series of Knockoffs; oh-so-gritty dark fantasy, etc.
I will say that one joke I really enjoyed was the excessive apostrophization of names; that's a particularly horrible tic, endemic to all sorts of SF, that needs to be killed off. Moreover, Rachel did a great job of articulating the apostrophes in her reading.
Whoops, did I say "Rachel"? I meant "Rac'h'el Sw'rs'ky."