This sequel to "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty", the first of Anne Rice's elegantly written volumes of erotica, continues her explicit, teasing exploration of the psychology of human desire.

Beauty, having indulged in a secret and forbidden infatuation with the rebellious slave Prince Tristan, is sent away from the Satyricon-like world of the castle. Once again Rice's fabulous tale of pleasure and pain dares to explore the most primal and well-hidden desires of the human heart.

"Beauty's Punishment" is the continuation of "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty", Anne Rice's erotic retelling of the popular fairy tale. In the second installment, Beauty is punished for having rebelled against the Prince. She, along with Prince Tristan, an insubordinate slave and object of Beauty's desire, is auctioned, captivated and subjected to the most erotic, tantalizing and cruel games of domination and submission.

In the village Beauty and some others are auctioned to the civilians who transform them into working slaves : they have to work, the boys are turned into horses or poneys, and their masters and mistresses are degrading them and punishing them into a new stage of submission. They develop their dependence on this enslavement to the point of getting in love with the punishment and the punishing masters or mistresses. At this moment they cannot even imagine themselves leaving or escaping from that degrading position because their psyche has been made dependent on it, because their intellect has been centered on it.

Their whole vision of the world and of themselves in the world holds only because of this enslavement that becomes the cornerstone of it, the apex of any intelligent or sensual reaction and action. They need the punishment to remain structured. Without the punishment they collapse into sheer non-existence, a scattered jigsaw puzzle whose pieces cannot be set back into any kind of a pattern.

Again, Anne Rice does an excellent job in illustrating the psychological implications of the human desire. She also does a splendid job in taking the course of the story to unexpected turns...

There are various differences between "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" and its sequel. In "Beauty's Punishment", the language is less fanciful and more explicit. Also, Prince Tristan is the focal character in this book -- thus, making Beauty seem as though she were a secondary character at times.

Book Details:

Title Beauty's Punishment (Erotic Adventures of Sleeping Beauty, 2)
Author Anne Rice writing as A. N. Roquelaure
Reviewed By Purplycookie ( )

I loved all of the hard chores these spoiled royalties had to perform. With Tristan the whole book has a softness that lessens the grit. ( )

The second book in the Beauty trilogy, Beauty has been sentenced to The Village. She has been warned of dire consequences, horrible punishments, and she can't wait. The writing is charming, the sex is stylized and fairly erotic, and the story...well, who really cares about the story? ( )

http://www.comunidadumbria.com/libros...) ( )

The first installation on the series, The Claiming Of Sleeping Beauty, was very good. It was novel and captivating. It also ends in such a way that the I couldn't wait to start Beauty's Punishment, the next installment.

I should have waited, or put it off all together.

The best summary I can manage without wasting too much of my time is to say this: the continuation is trite, boring, uninspired at best, infuriatingly incompetent at worst.

Beauty being a petulant twit in the first book is understandable- she's new and used to being treated like a princess. How she manages to not wise up and quit the babe in the woods routine is beyond me. It's certainly not sexy, just ridiculous.

Do yourself a favor and stop with the first book. ( )