This toy was definitely designed
"
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" begins as an adult version of the childhood tale. But of course this tale is more about the sexual and psychological aspect of the relationship between Beauty and the Prince that brings her back to life. Beauty has a sexual awakening at the hands of her Prince.
Ann Rice writes this erotic tale under the name of A. N. Roquelaure. But it is filled with the flowery descriptions that make her books very similar. In some ways this makes the story more lush, but in other ways it brings the story to drag in certain areas and bring the reader to try and skip the descriptive paragraphs.
Beauty becomes a slave, brought to a system where Kings and Queens start out their lives as slaves. She is taught to bend to the Prince's hand in different exercises and interacts with other slaves in this perverse school.
While I found the book interesting and a fun read, I did not find it as erotic as I had hoped. The plot came across a little shaky to me and did not draw me in to actually care about the character of Beauty. I believe the torture and pain aspect of the slaves was not written in a realistic fashion.
Readers who are interested in
light BDSM and pony play may enjoy this book as a nice little read.
I did go on to read the other books in this series. I thought each book as it went through the trilogy became more weak in it's story. If you wish to read just one of these three books, "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" would be your best bet.
I would recommend looking into "
The Story of O" for a better BDSM related book. It is a great classic and much more interesting read in general.
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty review by Arousing Suspicion
I agree that this novel is very story like and doesn't go quickly into erotic scenes but the anticipation build up is wonderful. I also agree about the unrealistic-ness of the events in the book but I find that is what makes it so erotic and arousing to me. Finaly I found that as you progress from one novel to the next the stories become more and more obscene and very fantasy like. What I like about this is that as you read you are able to place yourself in the characters postion in a safe and healthy manner all the while being able to imagine and fantasise about the sensations they experience as being your own.
Also, not a lot of people know this but the characters Anne Rice uses in her erotica novels (which were published after her vampire chronicles) were used again with different names in her vamipre chronicles. If you take the time to analyze the personality types of the characters in both series it becomes apparent.
She used the name A.N. Roquelaure (apparently...I might be wrong) for her erotica triology in order for the novels to not be associated to her more popular name so as to avoid her parents knowing of her litterature in erotica.
I know Annie Rice for her famous vampire chronicles, which are the best in its genre to my taste. As of her stunt into S&M, it is not her style.
N.S.- what did you think of this book?
Wow, it's funny because I couldn't disagree more! It's great to have read the review on this book accroding to someone else's point of view. Great Review.
While not the best erotica ever written, these are definitely classics and had a profound effect on my later sexual development during my college years. I agree with you that this is the best book of the series.