A review by imogenrose97
Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.25

Hiromi Kawakami is one of my just read authors, her writing holds a bewitching mood that is impossible to escape, each book I've read feels outside of time. While there might be recognisable signs and places, feelings and dreams, it feels completely removed from life, transporting you to somewhere beyond. This is highlighted in Dragon Palace in the breaking apart of taboo, from tentical porn adjacent stories to a younger brother drinking the milk of his sister. Though weird and typically wrong, because her writing feels outside of life it doesn't make you squirm as it would on a screen. None of it feels gratuitous either, it felt more like breaking apart the preconceived ideas of how life is to explore what's underneath. 
Though this was for sure not my favourite Kawakami, it still held the mystifying candour that I love so much.