• The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

  • The First of the Classic Erotic Trilogy of Sleeping Beauty
  • By: Anne Rice
  • Narrated by: Genvieve Bevier, Winthrop Eliot
  • Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
  • 3.3 out of 5 stars (946 ratings)

Publisher's summary

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. Now Anne Rice's retelling of the Beauty story probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire.

Here the Prince reawakens 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.

Don't miss any of the books in Anne Rice's Classic Erotic Trilogy of Sleeping Beauty.
©1999 A.N. Roquelaure (P)2004 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

What listeners say about The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
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Performance
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Story
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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Spanking awful!

This is a book about spanking and bondage. And spanking. In fact, as one of the many sex slaves in the Prince's castle, Beauty - and the other sex slaves - are spanked as often as possible and in a multitude of situations. I do not find spanking erotic. If you do, you will enjoy this book. Maybe even pick up a couple of spanking tips.

The bad writing I will put down to the abridgement. I normally dislike abridged books and this one just reinforces that view.

Pity. I have read and enjoyed some of Anne Rice's other books. I don't think I'll be able to finish this one. I did try. I won't be reading the others. Or any more abridged books either.

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29 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Dark Erotica

This is not a book for the easily blushed. The story is dark but keeps moving. You can understand the transformation of it's characters to who they become and how they become that way. I found that more interesting then the erotica. Well written.

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Dark book by known author

You can tell by the way the book is written who the author is. It is very dark and demented. This is not a book for the faint of heart. If you like very graphic books you will love the series

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20 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Got boring quickly - too much spanking

The book started off good but then just fell into a routine. Nubile captive is taken to this room where she is spanked and humiliated. Then taken off to meet this person...where she is spanked. Goes to her room to sleep but not before she is spanked. Next day taken outside where a woman on a horse chases her around with a long paddle and, you guessed it, spanks her some more.

It's just not hot.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Something is wrong with this writer...

I can see getting into a book with a really good graphic sex scene... maybe once or twice in an hour's listening... if it's a sexy book... or if I'm reading a sexy short story like the Forums in Penthouse magazine we guys would read as lusty teenagers. To write such a story is tiring and exhausting and usually only lasts a few pages at the most, because, let's face it. The mood passes, the fantasy is over and we either get on with the rest of the story or we mail our confession off to Bob Guccionne or Larry Flint and get on with our lives.

Not Ms. Rice.

She apparently never gets out of this mood.

Ever...

I would be extremely afraid to even meet Ms. Rice after this book... The wave after wave of graphic, hard core, freaky and disturbing sex - sex that would wind you up in a nice little tracking bracelet in real life for even thinking such thoughts, is extremely tiring and boring after about the 12th spanking.

I usually try to "get into" whatever mood the writer is into when I read their book, but the thought process of this writer has me turning off my MP3 player and burning it. I could no more get into the though process of this writer any more than I could get into a dog dry humping my leg. It's not filth, it's just... Yuck... Pardon me, I need to go take a wire brush to my skull to get this book out of my head....

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Anne Rice - Wow

Wow, the reading of this series was very unexpected. It was intriguing, I had to keep listening. I was very engrossed in the story and the characters. I love Anne Rice and this is so different from anything I have read from her.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Decent

The story is interesting but the narrator is rather bland and definitely doesn't do it justice

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

no, no, no

I was wholeheartedly disappointed by this book. I was turned onto it by an excerpt I read in a book of erotica. Turns out the excerpt was from the second book, _Beauty's Punishment_. Maybe that installment is better, but this first book bored me to tears. It wasn't fun or intersting. There wasn't much of a plot. It wasn't erotic. It wasn't even very kinky. Save your money for something else.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Vulgar, perverse, weird

If you're into that, buy it. Otherwise, don't waste your money or time. I couldn't finish it.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

The original Fifty Shades

Is there anything you would change about this book?

This book is good for what it's worth and so, I wouldn't change much but I would definitely take out the rape scenes.

Has The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty turned you off from other books in this genre?

It has not. If anything it has helped me find more that are better than this.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Yes it did but I think they could have found a male narrator to do the male voices.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

That depends on whether it was rated r or xxx.

Any additional comments?

The writer of Fifty Shades must have read or listened to this prior to writing Fifty Shades because they are many similarities.

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6 people found this helpful