Product Description

Rice writing as A. N. Roquelaure.

In the traditional folk tale "Sleeping Beauty," the spell cast upon the lovely young princess and everyone in her castle can only be broken by the kiss of a Prince. Anne Rice's retelling of the Beauty story probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10552 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780452281424
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
* "One of the most wonderful, erotic, sensual books ever written" - Sting on INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. *"a literary odyssey into a world of forbidden lust...the same kind of skillful writing that brought respectability into the works of Henry Miller, Anais Nin and D.H. Lawrence" - UPI

About the Author
A Roquelaure is the pen name of Ann Rice, a well published author of various gothic vamprire novels. She lives in California.

Customer Reviews

Dive right in...
...the water's warm! But, seriously, I had heard about this erotic novel for some time and for some reason, never took the time to read it. Big mistake! It was that good for me. Of course, I am totally into these bdsm or s/d books and finding good ones has become increasingly hard. But, still, this sensual erotica tale is just what I was looking for. Anne Rice isn't just for fans of vampire fiction, i.e. "Interview w/the Vampire". This one is for any reader who WANTS sexy literature and wants to enter into another world. A very high recommend to anyone who wants to explore subjects of this nauture, along with Breaking the Girl and Eager to Please: Two Erotic Novels of Submission.

Preposterous
Let me make clear at the outset, I am no kinkophobe. I can certainly enjoy a bit of ... let's call it "consensual rope"; I've read some blindfolded-and-tied-to-the-bed scenarios that I enjoyed a lot. But I have a very peculiar kink of my own: I like the fiction I read, even the erotica, to make some kind of sense. I like my readings to hang together, to be based at least on some frail thread of real-world logic.

And these don't and aren't. Rice's "Beauty" trilogy is almost comically implausible. I think it was Shirley Jackson who offered a bit of advice to writers of fiction: the reader, she said, may accept for the purposes of a given story that there exists a Land of Oz, but he will not accept that he can see the Land of Oz from his kitchen window. Similarly, I can accept that there exists such a phenomenon as sexual slavery; but I cannot, for this or any other story, accept the notion that sexual slavery was the linchpin for the entire socioeconomic structure of Medieval Europe.

And yet this is the notion on which the entire series is based. "Beauty" and her "Prince" are unusual only in that he has *taken* her after awakening her from her hundred-year sleep. The rest of the slaves in his mother's palace -- dozens or hundreds of them, princes and princesses all, and every one not merely attractive but exquisitely beautiful -- are "tribute", sent by their royal parents from the surrounding kingdoms. (I valiantly resist the temptation to render that as "kinkdoms".) In this palace, they spend several years learning to be completely obedient and submissive sexual property (being spanked, being publicly displayed, being spanked, crawling around on their hands and knees, being spanked, being forced into various forms of pony-play, being spanked, picking up rosebuds from the floor with their teeth, being spanked, calling grooms and pages and kitchen help "my lord," being spanked); then they return to their own lands. And this situation has obtained long enough that Beauty's own parents, over a century before, served in this way themselves. Apparently every kingdom and principality in Europe participates in this one-sided "tribute" arrangement.

Oh ... did I mention that Rice *really* likes to describe her princes and princesses being spanked?

Also, Rice seems to have included any notion that struck her as "erotic" at the time, without stopping to consider the real-world implications. "Dear god, who knew that Ms. Rice had such a disgustingly vast knowledge of sexual torture", one review asked: well, she DOESN'T. She has no idea what she's writing about: Anne Rice is completely ignorant, irresponsibly so, about her subject matter. What we see in the "Hall of Punishments", to give one specific example, would cripple or kill a human being within a very few hours, although we're told that "punishments" are not to cause injury, only pain.

There were things in this book that bothered poor squeamish little me in other ways. I believe I've made clear that I thought Rice's obsession with spanking -- and spanking, and spanking, and spanking, and spanking -- her characters grew monotonous, excruciatingly so. And I REALLY didn't need the specific information that the fifteen-year-old heroine's "groom" arranges her hair in such a way as to make her look even younger than she is. (Nor is this the most offensive item. In the grotesquely racist third volume, Rice crosses the line into obvious pedophilia, mentioning the specific presence of "little boys" .)

And it goes on, and on, and on. Spanking. Tying up. Spanking. Lovingly detailed descriptions of how humiliated the heroine feels. More spanking. Leather straps. Suspension. Spanking. Pony-play (apparently this fantasy version of Medieval Europe has no draft animals at all, only "princes"). More humiliation. Spanking.

I can only apply to this astoundingly tedious book, and to its sequels, that single worst word that can be applied to any piece of erotica:

They are BORING.

Either you love it or you hate it
There are some VERY mixed reviews on this book. It is for me, by far, one of the most erotic things I have read. I couldnt put it down and it stayed in my mind for days after finishing it. (I have read it 3 times now). I thought the 'Sleeping Beauty' aspect of it was a nice twist. All I can say is, Anne has one heck of an imagination. It is not for the squeemish however as literally almost every single page is filled with some sexual innuendo and MUCH more. If you are not into kink, then this book is probably not for you. However, I didnt think I was all that into it either until I picked up this book...