Reviews tagging 'Slavery'

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice

33 reviews

mximlay's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

lahariel's review against another edition

Go to review page

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

callie4223's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
I don't know quite yet how I'm going to rate this book. Mainly because I'm unsure of my feelings toward it. I don't want to say that I enjoyed this book, but I also don't want to say I didn't enjoy it. I only read this book because Anne Rice writes it, and I know she's very popular with her Interview With A Vampire novel. For one, there is no plot, but I was so engrossed in this horrific story that I didn't care if it didn't have a plot or not. I will say that besides the horrendous sexual content, I do believe that everyone in the book overused spankings. That's literally all the book is. Someone somewhere is constantly getting spanked for something; it doesn't matter what. 

This book is my first by Anne Rice, and because of my lack of knowledge of the author, I feel as though I didn't know what to expect with the amount of excessive BDSM. 

I'm not going to tell you to read it or not. Do what you want. I suggest using personal judgment for a novel of this magnitude. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

ebb_and_flow's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

queengaynor's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

bagelanjeli's review against another edition

Go to review page

The lack of consent is hard to get past. She's literally a prisoner. Not the kind of thing I'd like to read. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

spinningjenny's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

Picked this book up in Seattle and it was a doozy of a read. I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend it or not recommend it but it's a heavy read and also v. much what it says it is. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

jemmania's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

Sad to see how prudish some of you are :/ even sadder to see people be like "I'm not a prude, but.." lmao, you are though.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

wanderinginsidebooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

Absolutely horrific
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

eldritch_flower's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

 Okay okay, is there a good reason for reading this book? Not for me.

That being said, I have a little story about the time I first read this book, and then why I ended up rereading it.

When I was 12(no that's not a typo), my aunt gave me a box of books. It was full of Anne Rice, James Patterson, Dean Koontz, and others. Among those books, was this one. Now, 12 year old me was excited because I really liked Sleeping Beauty! Who didn't? And why would 12 year old me assume that this was a BDSM retelling?? I read the first chapter, closed the book, and hid in my room like I was the guilty one. In hindsight, I can laugh at this.

I'm much older now, and not shy about reading smut(Ice Planet Barbarians was one of my favorites last year). So I decided to give this series another go. And I gotta say, it's nothing like I remember(15 years of distance will do that). The intro was written by Anne Rice where she explains that she wrote this book because she wanted to write what she wanted to read, and that the submission and pain was something not to be shamed, because it's a very real kink that very real people have. And she wrote this with the intention that every page have something ~spicy~ unlike other harlequin novels that only have one or two scenes interspersed throughout the 400 page novel.

And oh my god did she do it. Admittedly, none of this is my thing. I am Ace after all. But I can absolutely see the appeal. The book very much as a storybook/fairytale feeling. The writing in this book compared to something like Interview with the Vampire(which is one of my favorites) is VERY different.

I would say that if you want to read this series, you definitely need to read the wiki articles on this book to make sure the content would be something you can handle. Because for the 80s, this was a SPICY book. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings