Beauty's Punishment

 

Level: Explicit

Genre: Fantasy > Erotica > BDSM

Obtained: Purchased at Borders

Reviewed by: Nic Echo

About the Book:

The second of Anne Rice's erotic Sleeping Beauty trilogy continues from where we left off. When we last saw Beauty, she had purposely disobeyed her prince and was condemned to the village. While she is on the way to the village, Beauty becomes enamored with the slave prince, Tristan, who also purposely disobeyed his master. Once they reach the village, they are auctioned off. Tristan ends up in the care of Nicolas, the Queen's chronicler, while Beauty is bought by Miss Lockley, the owner of one of the inns. Once the auction has taken place, we are taken back and forth between Tristan and Beauty as we follow them on their emotional and sexual adventures of servitude. 

Rating: 6/10

I have to admit that this is a very weak six. Although it was better than the previous installment, I still can't say this was an arousing read. The book does delve into the characters a bit more, but even so there seems to be little sense of character development. We do, however, get a nice insight into the mentality of being a slave, and there are some tender and loving moments between Tristan and Nicolas, which is one of the main things that made this book redeemable. Beauty, however, was still as dull as the last time and seemed nothing more than a whiny teenager. At least her attitude seems right for her age. Throughout the book, we are constantly bombarded with how she is a bad, bad girl who disobeys to only try her damnedest to obey moments later. Although this would be a logical mentality for someone to take, it gets tedious quickly. Also, Beauty actually calls herself a bad, little girl mentally. Yes, those exact words. You would think Rice could come up with something better.

The other improvement was there seemed to be more variation in the humiliation and punishment. There is still lots of spanking, but they are no longer every other paragraph, and many of them seem to be integrated into other forms of punishment. Rice also introduces more plot in this book, but sadly, most of it doesn't come into play until near the end when there is talk of raider that will come and steal slaves.

SPOILERS (Sort of)

There is actually quite a gripping moment when Tristan is taken from Nicolas after they have only recently found a love for each other.

END SPOILERS

Overall, Anne Rice may have improved from Claiming by attempting to introduce actual plot, sexual variation, and character development, but she still falls short of what this could have been. It is still repetitive and a sexual bore, and again I would advise anyone that dislike lots of sex, BDSM, or gay sex to stay far away, because once again that is basically all the book is.

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