Too Many Spankings For Beauty?
A while ago, somebody left a rude five or six word comment on this post, to the effect that the Beauty books were teh suck because they were boring. Since the comment didn’t seem to have anything to contribute to the greater glory of Bondage Blog, it died in moderation along with all the spam. But I remembered it when I saw this three-sentence review by Violet Blue:
Beauty is put through endless explicit hardcore trials in training as a sexual slave, with a focus on ponygirl sexual servitude and spankings. Lots and lots and lots of spankings. By the 150th spanking on page 150 I was like, okay, I feel spanked, and didn’t finish the series.
My own problem with the books is that Beauty never displays any discernible character or will. She’s a very desirable flesh puppet for three whole books, posing where she’s told, doing what she’s told with pussy lips well thrust out for public viewing. If she has any motivations, they are kept secret from the reader. When she simply must be shown to take some initiative, it’s portrayed as an impulse, a whim, or an uncontrollable urge. She’s so passive, it’s as if she never actually woke up from her hundred years of cursed sleep when The Prince porked her silly. Reading the books, I got so bored with her state of passive apprehensiveness and wholly unexplained desire to please a bunch of dominant folks who never give her any reason to care about their good opinion, that I found myself going “please oh please, would somebody please tie her up again, or give her another spanking, or find some creative way to torment her? Because eventually she’s got to react to something!”
Too many spankings? Hell, I don’t think she got enough!
Sadly for Beauty fans, the rest of Violet’s post includes the fell news that Anne Rice has got religion. If she’s writing vampire books featuring “a definite Christian framework and a focus on the theme of redemption”, you can bet it will be a cold day in hell before she writes any more BDSM erotica, with or without a tireless “Spank Me Barbie” punishment doll.
Elsewhere on Bondage Blog:
AR definitely got religion. I saw an interview on CNN when her last book (Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt) was released, and she said she was going to focus on religious subjects in her writing.
It is a shame, because some of her books were really great, and it was more than partly because of the eroticism. (The Witching Hour comes to mind, as do the earlier Vampire Chronicles).
A shame? I’ve always thought her books were not well written. All of them, every one of them, “looked” interesting because of the subject matter, but every one of them lost me because the writing just wasn’t there.
If she’s got religion, she’ll be targeting her books to fundamentalists from now no. Perhaps that’s exactly as it should be. Lots of great writing out there! Erotic and otherwise. She won’t be missed.
I enjoy reading about Beauty’s exploits, but I also enjoy the troubles Tristan has…must be the mistress in me cuming out.
i think the Beauty Books are a good start for a beginner. i’ve moved past them being my only BDSM erotica, but one has to start somewhere.