This review broken up into three parts:

This for the first book in the trilogy: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. (Rating: 2 Stars)

Since I have read and owned quite a few Anne Rice books, I wasn't too surprised to find this book series with adult themes written under the fictional name A.N. Roquelaure.

What I wasn't anticipating was how little plot was involved with this book.

Based on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty", the main character Beauty is woken up in the beginning of the book by a Prince raping her.

The story continues as she is "claimed" by the Prince as his prize, and he strips he naked, parades her through the village and than takes her back to his castle where he, his mother, his court and all the people who work for the court subject Beauty or other royal slaves in their care to various forms of sadism and masochism.

Unlike other readers who have incorrectly labeled this book BDSM in their tags, BDSM refers to two willing partners. And bluntly put, all the Princes and Princesses who are slaves within this kingdom, walking or crawling naked and being subjected to daily rapes, torture and subjecation are not willing partners. They are slaves who are tortured.

My main concern with this book is that there is no plot to support this treatment of Beauty and her detainees; there is a thin (very thin) storyline to support the numerous and detailed and LONG sex scenes.

I have read Anne Rice books before and am familiar with her erotic scenes, but at least in her other books, the scenes supported the characters and their development.

In this book, Beauty is forced into this behavior and changes because of the sheer quantity of torture and abuse. This does not make a plot, and it doesn't make good writing.

I am disappointed with Anne Rice. I think I understand why she changed her writing focus after reading this drivil which showcases rape of unwilling men and women in a positive light.

Shame on her for putting a reader through this pain.

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This for the second book in the trilogy: Beauty's Release. (Rating: 3 Stars)

At the end of Book 1, Beauty impulsively tries to run away from Punishment, which results in her being sent down to "The Village".

The Village sits below the Kingdom, and is filled with people who purchase naked slaves at yearly auction for their use as they see fit for the summer. The Village is set in a Medieval-type time period, and horses and wagons are in use.

Buyers can utilize the slaves for manual labor, brothels, replacement for farm animals and servents, among other uses.

The book is a further in-depth look into Beauty and Tristen's life after they are sold as slaves, their different lifestyles and their erotic adventures.

The reader is meant to be shocked by some of the various methods our writer has employed to distribute obedience and promote eroticism. However, once we are introduced to some methods of sadism in the first novel, many of those same methods are re-used in the second novel (see other reader's review regarding their boredom). This is repeated over and over again, so that the fear of these sadistic methods becomes boring reading after the third introduction of punishment.

On a better note, I enjoyed the thoughts and interactions between the characters, and felt that the characters were more fully developed in the second novel, to finally allow the reader into Beauty and Tristen's thoughts.

I bumped up my rating for this book to three stars. While it could definately have used more character development, it was a vast improvement over the first book: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.

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This for the third book in the trilogy: Beauty's Punishment. (Rating: 3 Stars)

For the third and last book of the trilogy, we see Beauty and some other slaves stolen from the Kindom and taken to the Sultan's Palace.

The final book further explores the slave concept, focusing on the Punishment of Silence, while introducing the reader to various foreign erotic scenarios.

The character development in this book is also further explored, and the reader gets to read more about the thoughts and desires of the slaves.

Kudos to Anne Rice for bringing up the topic of female circumcision in this book, a topic not well-known in the United States.

Does Beauty make it back across the water to the Queen's Kingdom? Does she make it back home? What happens to her after her time in slavery?

The final book answers these questions and tidies up some of the storylines, leaving the reader as if s/he ate a a half-full meal at the table.

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Summary of the three novels:

I feel that Anne Rice simply wrote this trilogoy of books to present erotic scenarios with the shell of an idea about the children's Fairy Tale Sleeping Beauty as the title suggests.

Unfortunately, this sereis did not have the rich character development of her other series which allowed you to explore the characters before, during and after their transformations, nor were any thoughts given to the characters to think about their previous lives. This is not only fantasy, it is ridiculous, as all these characters had previous lives before becoming slaves.

In addition to the problem of character development, I felt Anne Rice really missed a fantastic opportunity to interweave the politics of two diverse Kingdoms within the story to create drama and intrique. I fail to believe that the Queen of the Kingdom would not train some slaves to be secretly reporting on the Sultan and what he is doing across the ocean. Masters of the Queens Kingdom could have traveled and visited, and the reader could have been introduced to practices, food and cultures previously unknown.

By introducing these storylines, this trilogy could have been lifted from a bunch of erotic scenarios to a memorable series worth reading.

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An exploration into the darker side of sexuality... This is an excellent book series, if this is what you are into, written by Anne Rice, . It is a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story, very loosely based on the fairy tale you know from childhood. Instead of being awakened by a kiss, she is awakened when the prince claims her virginity. From here she is forced into a sexual slavery, a tribute required of a more powerful kingdom. At its heart, this is a non-consentual BDSM series, although it can be enjoyed if one remembers that it is only a novel about such touchy topics. As the novels move forward, Beauty finds that she is not completely against what is happening to her. ( )

First Book: Fun and novel read. Interesting background and lots of creative naughty bits for fun.

Second book: Lost steam. She lost most of the background and plot and even though there was a variety of positions and objects -- she recycled quite a bit of the sex scenes.

Third book: I've NEVER read an erotica book that I considered flat out BORING until I read this book. I skipped what little bit of the plot was there. I believe she used MAD LIBS to write out the sex scenes. They seemed idetical except for which piece of fruit was inserted where. I've been more stimulated reading the phone book. ( )

Excellent, as far as erotica goes. Very baroque, very obscene. The character development is decent, but not perfect. Unfortunately, the endless spankings get old after a while. I mean, there ARE sexual things people can do other than spank each other. ( )

A delicious dive into a world that I would never allow myself to personally delve in. Though these books do make it tempting!!! ( )