Roquelaure, A. N.
About the Author:
A. N. Roquelaure is a pen name used by Anne Rice.
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
1 out of 5
(1 book)
The Claiming Of Sleeping Beauty
The first book of the Beauty trilogy. At first, I enjoyed the premise of the book as Sleeping Beauty is awoken by more than just a kiss, expecting the author to go on to explore the inherent sexuality in such fairy tales. Sadly, my expectations were wrong and the author instead goes on to tell the story of Beauty's training as a sex slave in a court dominated by BDSM.
The plot is as deep as an amateur porn movie and the content much the same. In a shocking misuse of her abilities, the writer fails to create any interesting characters or have those she does create develop at all; all Beauty herself ever does is simper.
So, as a fantasy novel it's awful, but what about as erotica? Well, some of the early scenes of Beauty's training are fairly erotic and not bad reading, but the author then simply attempts to outdo herself by making each sexual scene more shocking and perverse than the last. This continues until she gets to Prince Alexei's story, wherein he is anally raped to the brink of insanity. At that point, all pretense of being arousing falls away and the book's intention (ie simply to cram in as much stuff that goes against Rice's Catholic upbringing as possible) becomes clear.
The 'story' in general has no resolution, makes little sense and is unpleasant to read.
The plot is as deep as an amateur porn movie and the content much the same. In a shocking misuse of her abilities, the writer fails to create any interesting characters or have those she does create develop at all; all Beauty herself ever does is simper.
So, as a fantasy novel it's awful, but what about as erotica? Well, some of the early scenes of Beauty's training are fairly erotic and not bad reading, but the author then simply attempts to outdo herself by making each sexual scene more shocking and perverse than the last. This continues until she gets to Prince Alexei's story, wherein he is anally raped to the brink of insanity. At that point, all pretense of being arousing falls away and the book's intention (ie simply to cram in as much stuff that goes against Rice's Catholic upbringing as possible) becomes clear.
The 'story' in general has no resolution, makes little sense and is unpleasant to read.
1 out of 5
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Fantasy (here)