124 reviews for:

Dragon Palace

Hiromi Kawakami

3.29 AVERAGE

tonihu_97's review

3.75

mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

jackalop3's review

4.0

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

shmole's review against another edition

3.0

dark funny mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

daniella84's review

DID NOT FINISH: 54%

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Usually I can at least kind of understand why people enjoy books I don't, but with this one I'm absolutely stumped over what people are getting out of it.

The first three stories were:
- Octopus man brings other man to rate women from a back alley to then choose one and chase her down the street
- Great grandmother starts suckling from her great granddaughter after confessing to murder
- Elderly man with a poop kink asks his caretaker to strip so he can fondle her

And then!! Just when I thought I was safe with "lady likes to eat drywall while a tiny man lives under her fridge" they hit you with a "and she is kind of an unwitting prostitute and then gets raped" conclusion.

Are y'all okay??? The fourth story in particular was so disjointed and nonsensical that I couldn't even begin to try to pull a message from it.

Like Peter the raccoon this book deserves to be abandoned in a gutter and I'm not gonna apologise for that!!!

brothmom420's review

4.25

emotional funny reflective

rneetje01's review

3.25

mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

rosafiona's review

3.0

challenging funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

magenta_menace's review

2.25

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thanks to netgalley for a free arc of this title in exchange for an honest review. i don't know how much of this i could chalk up to awkward translation, but this collection just didn't do it for me. these magical realism tales draw from japanese folkloric traditions, but some of them read too bizarre without the proper elaboration. my favorite story in the collection was "hokusai," primarily because of the clarity of the piece--most of these stories had a sort of ambiguity that made the narrators tough to relate to. and i understand the need to not name protagonists for the sake of a myth, but when most of the stories refer to characters without a name, it's quite easy to get lost in the shuffle and not know how the story is talking about.

bibliogamer's review

2.0

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If I’m being completely honest, I can’t say I enjoyed these short stories nor did I hate them. They just were. They existed in a time and space of my life (which is thankfully in the past) and they were weird. They all had some kind of themes involving animals, gods, age disparity, love, and sex.

I’ve only read Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami, so when I saw this collection of short stories, I was intrigued. It definitely wasn’t what I expected and I can’t say I’d pick it up again or recommend it.

This collection includes 8 short stories:

emma_honner's review

3.0

funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: N/A

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated