Christmas in April — A Fourth Entry in The Sleeping Beauty series is on the way

I do NOT normally do this, but goddammit, this is something I seriously never thought would happen: Anne Rice is releasing another Beauty book!! I still can’t believe it.

The upcoming book is entitled Beauty’s Kingdom, and when I received the e-mail notification of its pre-order from Amazon the other day, I was grinning ear-to-ear over it. Anyone who follows this blog knows I’m a HUGE fan of the Sleeping Beauty trilogy Anne Rice penned under the nom de plume A. N. Roquelaure.

(Here’s the review I posted for the first entry in the series, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.)

Of course, I went over to Amazon to have a look at the description, and damn her publisher, but there is very little there. Here’s the cover and description from the pre-order page on Amazon:

Product Description

The erotic Sleeping Beauty trilogy now continues with a fourth novel by master storyteller and bestselling author of Prince Lestat, Anne Rice, writing as A. N. Roquelaure

Mega-bestselling author Annie Rice returns to where she left off in Beauty’s Release with the disappearance of Queen Eleanor in Bellavalten. Now, twenty years after they were forced to leave the kingdom to return to their homeland, Beauty and her husband Laurent agree to travel back as its king and queen, to uphold the ways of complete sensual surrender, with a twist: they now insist on voluntary servitude in Bellavalten.

Countless eager princes, princesses, lords, ladies, and common folk journey to Beauty’s new kingdom where she and her husband awaken their domain, ushering in a new era of desire, longing, and sexual ecstasy. Provocative and stirring, Rice’s imaginative retelling of the Sleeping Beauty myth will be hailed by her longtime fans and new readers of erotica just discovering the novels. This book is intended for mature audiences.

GAH!! Such a tease:/  So, I decided to look around to see what else I could find. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much.

I stumbled across a Kirkus Review for it, but it told us essentially nothing we didn’t already know about the trilogy. While I may have my own personal misgivings about the relative value of a review from Kirkus, the review was thankfully a positive one, and the last line of the review only made me want to read the book even more:

“Hard-core? Yes. Overwritten? For sure. Guilty pleasure? Absolutely.”

Can I get a T-shirt with that quote emblazoned upon it? Read the rest of the review at Kirkus here.

I hopped over to Anne Rice’s site to see if there might be any teasers or what-not but alas, I didn’t see a listing for the book there. Her site is well worth a look at though for any of you who haven’t seen it yet. Very well laid out:)

One of the things I definitely did notice is the decidedly evolved “tone” from that of the original trilogy. There is now an emphasis on consent, whereas the original trilogy was decidedly non-consensual in many sections. As controversial as non-consent themes in erotic fiction have become in the intervening 30+ years since publication of the original trilogy, I wonder if this will at all “soften” the tone of this new entry. I’m guessing this might be more along the lines of “consensual non-consent” similar to what we see in such novels as Anneke Jacob’s masterpiece As She’s Told wherein consent is at first clearly given, but after that, the submissive is pretty much “along for the ride” from that point on. Just a guess.

Only one way to find out how Rice has handled it in this entry in the series, of course, but it’s fun as an author to speculate on some of this stuff:) I’d love to hear what others think of this upcoming book, or about the series in general, so don’t be afraid to comment or e-mail.

Thanks for listening to me blather on like the fan boy I am.

Now counting down until April 21, 2015 🙂