Banned Books Week - Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

Author: Anne Rice ( Writing as A.N. Roquleaure)
Publisher: Plume/Penguin Books (1983)

From bestselling author Anne Rice, writing as A.N. Roquleaure. In the traditional folktale of '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. It is an ancient story, one that originally emerged from and still deeply disturbs the mind's unconscious. Now 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. Here the Prince reawakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation. His reward for ending the hundred years of enchantment is Beauty's complete and total enslavement to him as Anne Rice explores the world of erotic yearning and fantasy in a classic that becomes, with her skillful pen, a compelling experience.

I am a huge fan of Anne Rice, but until Banned Books week came up, I had never picked up one of her early erotica novels.  All of them have been on the banned/challenged list at one time or another.  I'm sure that I don't really even need to point out why.  Research shows that people have tried to have them pulled from library shelves because they are thought to be pornography.  I am happy to say that my library system offers a wide variety of erotica, old and new!  

I have to admit that I didn't finish this one.  If you have been following the blog for a while, you will note that I tend to be the one who reads and reviews most of the romance and erotica on here. So, I am in no way a prude or opposed to a story with explicit sexual content.  What I found lacking in this story right from the beginning was emotion. In 100 years, no other prince had figured out how to awaken the kingdom.  The Prince awakens Sleeping Beauty by basically raping her. That really turned me off from the beginning.  Then, I kept reading only to find out that since he figured the trick out, she essentially has to be come his sex slave. Gee, thanks! I stopped reading at this point. Being an Anne Rice fan, I was very disappointed.  Maybe I'll go back to this some day and give it another chance.  But for now, I will stick with her vampire novels.  While I didn't care for this one, I am glad that I had the opportunity to judge for myself! 


--Kari