Books › The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
368 pages
A lush, unapologetic descent into a dark fairy tale where awakening means absolute surrender to decadent, erotic subjugation.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a velvet-lined cage. It is a deeply immersive, claustrophobic, and unapologetically explicit experience that strips away the sanitized veneer of classic fairy tales to reveal a core of raw, dark desire. The pace is steady and hypnotic, driven not by plot but by an escalating series of decadent, ritualistic humiliations and erotic awakenings. The prose is ornate and formal, creating a dreamlike detachment that makes the extreme BDSM elements feel both mythic and deeply transgressive. The atmosphere is heavy with incense, velvet, and dread-soaked sensuality. It is a polarizing, boundary-pushing read designed for those who want to explore the darkest, most submissive edges of erotic fantasy without the safety net of modern romance tropes.
- Mood
- dreamlike
- claustrophobic
- sensual
- oppressive
- Tone
- lush
- unapologetic
- decadent
- formal
- detached
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- sexual submission · loss of autonomy · dark fairy tales · erotic awakening · objectification as fantasy
- The writing
- Ornate, highly descriptive, and deliberately archaic, the writing mimics the cadence of a classic fable while delivering relentlessly explicit content.
- The arc
- The journey descends from dormant innocence into a disorienting, overwhelming immersion in total submission and erotic subjugation.
- Who it's for
- Readers seeking extreme, boundary-pushing BDSM erotica wrapped in the lush, gothic aesthetics of a dark fairy tale.
Content notes
- graphic sexual content
- non-consensual sexual themes
- extreme BDSM
- physical abuse
- public humiliation
About the book
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. In the first book of the trilogy, Anne Rice, writing as A.N. Roquelaure, retells the Beauty story and probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire. Here the Prince awakens 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. Readers of Fifty Shades of Grey will indulge in Rice’s deft storytelling and imaginative eroticism, a sure-to-be classic for years to come.
Description from Open Library.
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