The Sleeping Beauty (ballet) and Princess Aurora arrives. She is introduced to four suitors by her doting parents. Aurora and the suitors perform the famous Rose Adagio. Presently, a cloaked stranger appears and offers a gift to the princess: a spindle. Having never seen one before, Aurora curiously examines the strange object as her parents desperately try to intervene. As predicted, she pricks her finger. While initially appearing to recover quickly, she falls into a swoon and collapses. The cloaked stranger reveals herself to be Carabosse, who believes that her curse still stands and that the princess is dead. Once again, the Lilac Fairy
The Sleeping Beauty Quartet harmless to readers. The trilogy is included in the American Library Association's list of "100 most frequently challenged books" of the 1990s, with the term "challenge" defined in American literature as "an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group". Professor Linda Badley of Middle Tennessee State University wrote in her 1996 book "Writing Horror and the Body" on the trilogy, that rewriting the myth of "Sleeping Beauty" as sadomasochistic fantasies enabled Anne Rice to explore "liminal areas of experience that could not be articulated in conventional literature, extant pornography, or politically correct