Rating: 
Summary: i should be punished
Review: i should be punished for buying and reading this poor excuse of a book. no story line , expected more fairytale and less porn. my bad. stick to vampires anne.
Rating: 
Summary: Much Better than the First¿..
Review: I was compelled to read this sequel to 'The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty'; I had already bought all the books. Although the first one was disappointing from a character stand point I was not disappointed in the topic matter only the delivery. This second book is much more deliberate in its telling of Beauty and Tristian, a fellow slave. This book seems to concentrate on the trial and tribulations of Tristian rather than our Beauty. Both Beauty and Tristian are disobedient slaves exiled to a near village for an extended punishment at the hands of everyday villagers skilled in the art of domination and submission. The journey both Beauty and Tristian take is more than the physical and sexual nature but of a psychological tale of submission, understanding, and acceptance of the situation with in them and around them. This second book was filled with acts of cruelty, desire, and satisfaction, but can be best described as Fantasy Erotica at its purist. girldiver.
Rating: 
Summary: Same old spankings
Review: I was disappointed in "the Claiming of Sleeping Beauty", the first book of this trilogy. I thought the book had too thin a plot, poor character development, and so many spankings that I was bored half way through. However, I thought that since it was part of a trilogy that maybe I should read the second book to see if the plot develops and whether the characters become more complex as the story unfolds. Unfortunately, I was disappointed again. The story line remains thin with the characters falling into sexual situation after situation, never gaining much insight.
There is a twist of plot that bears mentioning. In the first novel, Beauty is a slave in a palace. However due to her rebelliousness she is sold as a slave to villagers. Also sold is the rebellious Prince Tristan. Tristan's master is Nicholas and a male to male sexual power struggle actually becomes the focus of much of the second novel. This section brought up two issues for me.
First, Rice seems to see sexuality and sexual orientation as extremely fluid. She assumes bi-sexuality to be a prevalent natural state of the human condition. In this regard she is similar to many sexual theorists. She never dwells on this however, she just assumes bi-sexuality to be normative and goes on from there.
Second, this leads to her bisexual characters becoming focused on the drama of relationship power dynamics. In the relationship between Nicholas and Tristan she allows the reader to see some change in the characters as Tristan moves from rebellion to submission on his own terms while she also reveals the thoughts of Nicholas as he becomes more emotionally involved as Tristan's vulnerability increases. Finally she allows two characters to change over time in relationship with each other and their interactions.
In the end, I still expected the plot to "thicken", for events to challenge the characters. I expected the characters to develop psychologically. In the end the second book was equal to the first, undeveloped and never reaching the level of good literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Character development?
Review: I'm amazed at the comments of other readers. Who reads bookslike this for the character development? The same ones who readPlayboy for the articles? This is not a fairy tale; it is not a character study. It is intended to be sexually arousing, and either you find it to be so, or you don't. But, please, read something else if you want character development.
Rating:
Summary: Lots o' Spankings, Not much Plot
Review: If you can get past the first shock of reading overdone, oversexed sentences that even a 3rd rate porn star would have trouble uttering, you might find something here for you. But I wouldn't bet on it. Unfortunately, it takes about two thirds of the book to get to any sort of adventure or plot line beyond the mind-numbing subservience of mute and constantly naked slaves. The first part of the book is obsessed with paddlings and phalluses and crawling around on the floor; and while there are some interesting bits, somehow the book always seems to shy away from any real character development or insight. Beauty comes off as a witless ninny, and Tristan as a helpless "all-i-need-is-a-firm-hand" zombie. Finally near the end there is some evidence of turmoil with foreign slave-raiders coming into town, but somehow I suspect that the sequel will be a vapid re-hash in a different locale. I suppose curiosity would make you want to finish the series, but come on, how many spankings do you need to get before you learn your lesson?
Rating: 
Summary: Oooh...OOOOhhhhh....OOOOOHHHHH my God!
Review: If you're not sitting in a bath tub when you read this one, the sheets will get wet. I walked into this one without really reading the back of the book, and was I in for a surprise! I have let every woman that would possibly be into this read it and they agreed. I'm not kidding when I say you'll be very wet when done. And it gets better and better with each book. If you didn't like it, well, maybe you missed the point. Anne Rice writes other erotica too, check it all out! How does Price Charming wake Sleeping Beauty? By F**king her awake and it gets deeper after that.
Rating:
Summary: Become a slave and you will love it
Review: 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. But this punishment is brutally interrupted by some sultanic pirates who take away these slaves to become the toys of their master, the Sultan. The Queen negociates that operation by lending these slaves of hers for a hefty amount of money and with the objective of them being given back in a couple of years. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Rating:
Summary: Past the Spanking, to the Psychology
Review: It had been a year or so since I had read the first one, and after completing this installment I would strongly suggest, for continuity sake, that people do not allow that lapse of time. Recall that this is an updated erotic version of the sleeping beauty fairy tale. The Prince in this medieval version wakes Beauty from her 100-year sleep not with a kiss, but by making her a sexual initiate. This act coupled with the mores and power structures of the land force Beauty off to the Prince's distant castle where she will undergo all manner of S&M and bondage. Despite becoming a castle favorite amongst the nobles, the Prince, and the Queen herself, Beauty's spirit and 'soul' is not broken by these acts and she willfully disobeys. She is sentenced to slavery in the neighboring village, and that is where this book takes up. Beauty and her final castle paramour Tristan are sold at auction in the village square, Beauty goes to an inn while Tristan is snapped up by one of the villagers richest men, the Queen's chronicler. What follows for the two are a series of spankings, public punishments, being dressed up like a pony [complete with, er, tail accoutrements] to pull carts, and being 'forced' to pleasure a wide variety of lodgers, and other slaves. It should also be mentioned that the castle slaves who are sent to the village for punishment must run around bereft of clothes, and never speak unless told to. It is here that the story flags, the punishments and humiliations mount, but we are only vaguely aware of both protagonists' feelings and thoughts as this continues. Beauty gives in to it all and comes to appreciate her place, but she does not give over the love of her soul. The numerous, and I do mean numerous, spankings become banal after awhile as the reader desensitizes. I found things becoming more interesting psychologically about 5/6 of the way through when Nicolas [Tristan's master] plumbs his depths about why a slave behaves as they do, what they think of the abasement, and whether love could come from this non-egalitarian relationship. Tristan provides no shocking revelations really, and the age-old struggle for dominance and power is left as the answer. Nicolas then professes his love as Tristan's heart soars, for he, Tristan needs the discipline to complete himself. This was a rather difficult read, I can't say I particularly enjoyed it, but it was interesting on other levels. As some other reviewers have noted the plot thins considerably and all we are left with are the power struggles acted out through sex. Thankfully, things picked up a bit, as noted, towards the end. For completeists sake I begin Beauty's final chapter, as she is kidnapped from the village and taken to the Eastern realms of a Sultan.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting twist on a fairy tale fantasy
Review: Like the other two books of the series Beauty's Punishment puts an very erotic spin on the old fairy tale. This series was my first time reading litterature on this particular area of sexual fantasy but it was so enthralling that I couldn't put the books down once I was drawn into the world of Beauty. If you have an open mind about various aspects of sexuality this book is one not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: very sexy, hot reading...if you like it when it hurts!
Review: Lovers of Anne Rice shouldn't be surprised by her Beauty novels--not really. These remakes of the Sleeping Beauty tales are wildly pornographic, sensual, and will appeal to readers of any sexual orientation. The Beauty novels are laced with sado-masochism and are not for the faint hearted, but if you like hard core pornography (for it is) with a touch of class, this book is for you
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