kiren11 's review for:

Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami
2.0

uhh where to begin? so there’s 8 short stories:

1. hokusai - con man guy says he’s an octopus, cons a guy into buying his tons of food and beer :) is he actually an octopus? idk man

2. dragon palace - woman has a problem where she speaks random phrases, villagers turn her into. “goddess” assuming she’s holy, she uses sex to control her followers

3. fox’s den - old man is possessed by fox spirit, he’s weirdly obsessed with turds? idk

4. the kitchen god - lil dude lives in ur fridge and u gotta pray to it, also weasels

5. mole - lil mole couple brings people that don’t care to live anymore to their home so they can burrow in blankets and sleep (honestly sounds nice)

6. the roar - weird ass sorry that felt incesty, nephew obsessed with multiple of his aunts boobies? idk maybe i’m not following

7. shimazaki - another incesty one, lady falls in love with her distant ancestor (400 year age gap), could not give a single shit about this one. pass

8. sea horse - lady came out of the sea, tempted by a man, and is lured out. wants to go back to the sea, idk not that deep

honestly almost all of these were MID, i liked the concepts and the prose felt poetic, but these just did not do anything for me at all