Anne Rice's The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

I want to warn you, before you delve any farther into this recommendation; it is not a positive one. I read Anne Rice’s erotic novel, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. It is the first book in an erotic trilogy. I was lured in because I thought it would be an erotic twist of a beloved fairy tale. Instead I feel almost like a victim for having read it. I want to warn readers out there that this is not another Fifty Shades of Grey meets Sleeping Beauty. Some S&M I was prepared to be okay with. What Rice presents to us goes beyond the comfort level of most (I assume) of the general public. The love slaves (all the Princes and Princesses in the land), including Sleeping Beauty, are continually humiliated, debased, molested, raped, sodomized, forced against their will to do outrageous acts, and brain washed by ALL the Lords and Ladies of the Kingdom. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty would be a fantastic novel for behavior analysis and victimization profiling. I found myself wishing that the Feds would arrive, busting into the castle and arrest everyone, saving the love slaves from their pain turned into pleasure warped minds. To me, they were treated like todays slave trade but they do not get all the drugs to help them. I am still trying to figure out how Anne Rice could write this novel in such a third person blasé voice. She knows her subject and is very detailed about it. It just, to me, is not erotic. I cannot imagine getting turned on by these books. Prince Alexi’s stories of his beginnings with the Queen were horrific and still make my stomach turn from what he went through.

So, all that said I would not recommend this series. However, if you are looking into victimization, fairy tales gone beyond bad (hopefully for a school paper), behavioral analysis, or are absolutely sure you are okay reading detailed rapings, beatings, and sodomizing scenes then this may be a book for you to read.