Beauty's Release

Beauty is kidnapped from the village and taken by boat to the Sultan's kingdom where she meets the Sultan's harem and brings her own vigorous sexual energy to her experiences there. Tristan and Laurent are exposed in the garden of male delights and all of the kidnapped slaves delight in the sensual Eastern pleasures of the Sultan's kingdom.
But their delight is challenged and short lived when the Captain of the Guard rescues them back to Queen Eleanor's court.
I didn't feel comfortable bringing this to work to read so it got buried on my bedside table for a while. I like this the most of the trilogy because of the challenges Laurent faces as a switch and the proposition of what happens after the slaves are released.

In the final volume of Anne Rice's deliciously tantalizing erotic trilogy, Beauty's adventures on the dark side of sexuality make her the bound captive of an Eastern Sultan and a prisoner in the exotic confines of the harem. In "Beauty's Release", Anne Rice makes the forbidden side of passion a doorway into the hidden regions of the psyche and the heart.

Part of the allure of this version for me was a release from the utter crudity of the European castle and village. Religious and philosophical thoughts of the region combine to show them that they are simply cogs in a grander scheme, and they take pleasure and freedom in this anonymity.

The first moment of their sultanic experience is to be degraded even more. Their being transformed show more into sexual toys is considered by their captors as destroying their intellect. They thus become mute animals that have no other level of existence than this very sexual drive and desire to satisfy all sexual and also cruel pulses in the sultan and his court.

But this third volume shows the metaphoric or even allegorical dimension of the trilogy. Beyond the erotic speculation in the book, Anne Rice shows how degrading a human being leads to the discovery she says, the building of a new consciousness that will have a lasting existence. Human beings are emerging in their humanity or even humaneness through the difficulties and the challenges they encounter, and first of all the degrading and enslaving situations. The more overpowered one is, the greater his psychological strength. This is kind of optimistic because many human beings are destroyed through these experiences and experiments. But it is based on the concept of resilience in human beings : their capacity to resist degredation, not by rebelling, but by reinforcing their psyche.

Upon completing the series, it helped to think of it anthropologically as if these strange undercurrents were the results of a completely different culture. In that respect it was quite interesting to observe the push for control, compliance, dominance, and love, and question whether that can be squared with ideas of entwined aggression and tenderness. Anne Rice provides the framework and fairy tale, but readers must ultimately decide that answer for themselves.

Book Details:

Title Beauty's Release (Conclusion of the Erotic Adventures of Sleeping Beauty, 3)
Author Anne Rice writing as A. N. Roquelaure
Reviewed By Purplycookie show less

A lot more of this story is told from the perspective of another slave, Prince Laurent, than Beauty's. Beauty's adventures are rather tame in comparison to Laurent's while they (Beauty, Tristan, Laurent, and a couple others) are kidnapped and held captive in the palace of an Arab sultan. Laurent manages to master one of the sultan's closest advisers, and in so doing become the most dynamic character and the hero of the piece. Fans of the trilogy will rejoice in the ending which promises Beauty's forever-after happiness, but those more squeamish about male on male sexual action will not be pleased with this volume. Personally, I thought it was an above average piece of erotica and mourn Rice's recent conversion to religion which almost show more guarantees she will not return to writing in this genre. show less

Imagine you're one of dozens of eligible princes presenting a suit for the hand of the lovely Princess Beauty. She takes you into a room, commands you to strip, examines you, violates you, whips you, then rejects you outright, stating that she is looking for a husband who will command her, not be her slave. This is NOT your typical fairy tale. Sure, there's the typical "happily ever after," but getting there made me giggle.

It's nice to have finally completed this trilogy. As imaginative as they are, you really do have to brace yourself when reading these books. Since erotica is much more important than the plot in this trilogy, I'll divulge a little on this final book.

The Queen sends a rescue squad to recapture Beauty and her fellow slaves Tristan and Laurent, but not before Laurent secretly teaches the Sultan's steward Lexius what it feels like to be a slave... which, of course, Lexius very much enjoys and finally succumbs to. Tristan and Laurent are punished for a year as ponies in the stable while Beauty is sent back to her land, being reluctantly relieved of her enslavement.

I won't go into how the story ends, but it does end rather perfectly for such show more a twisted little series of books. So, you do walk away from the series feeling good about how things turned out.

If you're into S&M erotica, this is certainly a series to add to your collection. However, if you're a "completionist" like me and are looking to read each and every book Anne Rice has written... you may want to weave other books into your reading routine when working through these. show less

I love the subplot and the finale of this series. The sex is kinky and a bit extreme, but the explanation of the sub/dom desires are spot-on.

I liked this book quite a bit, but I would have liked to read it more in Beauty's point of view. It was still probably the best book in the trilogy and I totally loved the ending. It surprised me, but I loved it.