Sleeping Beauty - Redefined

Warning: Disturbing themes ahead.

A few weeks ago at the office, the topic over lunch was books. I can't specifically remember, but it probably started when I again squee-ed (is there such a word? well there is now) over the then upcoming Harry Potter Book 7. Anyhow, so it evolved around the Harry Potter series, so of course there were talks about other book series, like Lord of the Rings, the Wheel of Time, the Narnia collection, etc. Then we started reminiscing about favorite books during childhood and adolescence. I can't quite remember how it came to be that we started talking about weird (unusual) books we have read, and that was an interesting topic before the conversation degenerated into a parody discussion of trashy novels we used to love (and still guiltily read when we get their hands on them).

One of the weird books we discussed was Anne Rice's The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. Or maybe I should say, the Sleeping Beauty series. Okay, I've heard of these books before and had a fair idea of what they contained (thanks to the green-minded corruption one can't help but pass through in high school). Also, having read Anne Rice's Exit to Eden, I was hard-pressed to expect that this would surpass that. Still, when one of my officemates came by the next day and told me he had brought his copies of the Sleeping Beauty trilogy, I didn't refuse. Of course I would never know if I didn't at least read it, wouldn't I? It's all in the spirit of appeasing my intellectual curiosity.

So Sunday afternoon last July 15, I settled down to read the first of the series: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.

Six hours later...

O-kay. Well, that was different.

To give a short overview on the book: It starts from the prince's point of view as he enters the castle where Sleeping Beauty lay in an enchanted slumber. A hundred years had passed, and according to the spell, it would be about time that the enchantment came to an end. The Prince easily cuts through all the vines and roots twisting around and enters the castle, where he steadfastly refuses to believe that there is a spell causing the unnatural sleep of all the still bodies he sees littering the grounds, until he spies the source of the enchantment: Sleeping Beauty. Apparently, the Prince is a confident (read: arrogant) man who believes everything is his for the taking, because upon seeing Beauty's loveliness, he then proceeds to rip her dress away and claim her. Beauty awakens (can't really blame the poor mite), and then the whole castle does, whereupon the Prince drags her off to a private room and continues to, er, lay his claim on her. The next day, the whole castle learns that the Prince is from that ruling kingdom and that he is taking Beauty with him as his pleasure slave. And thus starts Beauty's adventures into the realm of BDSM.

At this point, after that relatively short introduction into the "story", the book continues on to tell of Beauty's sexual trials and education. From discarding her clothes and learning to go through each day in her birthday suit (unless her masters deemed it necessary for her to wear ornaments), to meeting other princes and princesses like herself who are also serving as pleasure slaves, to being treated like a whipped dog (correction: whipping dog), to performing like a naked circus animal for the amusement of the Lords and Ladies of the castle, to being punished and learning to love the punishments - by the time you read one-fourth of the book you'll have learned that going naked, for days, is actually the least of Beauty's concerns (and yours too, if you had to go through all that). By the time you get to half of the book, you'll have stopped thinking anything of nakedness or sex slaves and have progressed to thoughts of "don't these people eat?" or "is that even physically possible?" or, more frequently in my case: "...and the point is...?". I think it was at this point that I found myself slipping into my old habit of scan-reading in order to finish the book fast, and the reason for that had less to do with eagerness-to-know and more to do with wanting-it-over-with.

It doesn't take a genius to deduce that this book will not go down as one of my all-time favorites. For one thing, throughout reading the book, I always had this nagging thought of "Okay, and then? What happens next? Uh-huh, and then?" which just increased in frequency towards the end of the book. Again, not because I was excited; I was merely impatient to read the end. I felt somehow obliged to read everything - I dunno, maybe I was half-hoping something would happen that would lift the book from the pits of drudgery.

I guess part of my disappointment would also stem from my expectations of Anne Rice's work. To be fair, there was still that sense of lush imagery that was prevalent in her vampire books. But, The Claiming somehow felt more like recitations instead of story, and maybe it was the sense of pointlessness (whew! what a word!) that really rubbed me wrong. For someone who likes to read stories, this seemed like a total waste of time.

Then again, this IS a book about BDSM, so maybe I was doomed to be disappointed right from the start. On the other hand, there's still the 2nd and 3rd book to go through, so who knows? I might still find something redeeming on those.

"I have a tendency to completely miss the point." - Katherine Winter, The Reaping