'Piñol's prose, in Cheryl Leah Morgan's translation from the Catalan, supports the book's gothic conceit with many conscious archaisms, and he sometimes lays it on a bit thick (.) You feel that neither the narrator, nor the author behind him, are quite sure how to bring things to a close.

Pinol's darkly compelling book is recommended to all lovers of uncanny literature, although several of its sentences are more than uncanny' - Benjamin Lytal, The New York Sun Die Sprache ? Knapp und elegant.' - Uwe Stolzmann, Neue Zürcher Zeitung Die Komposition ? Ist klar, streng, zielgerichtet. 'Erschöpft kehrt der Leser zurück von der Reise an die Grenzen der menschlichen Existenz, und nun fragt er sich, was von der kunstvollen Inszenierung des Katalanen, von diesem kammerspielartigen Albtraum zu halten sei.But its narrator has a lofty, turn-of-the-century turn of phrase, a distinct philosophical bent.' - Laurence Phelan, Independent on Sunday (.) With a plot pared down to these extreme basics, and no small amount of gore, Cold Skin seems to resemble a literary equivalent of the low-budget early horror movies of George Romero and Sam Raimi. ' Cold Skin is a superbly controlled and creepy little allegorical novel, set on a strangely verdant outcrop of rock somewhere on the edge of the Antarctic circle.The angst is implicit in the bleakness of the island and, in case we missed it, is underlined by portentous comments' - Michael Eaude, The Independent

The resourceful hero digs ditches, fires rifles and uses dynamite against the hordes, described variously as amphibians, fish, reptiles or near-humans. 'This is an adolescent boys' adventure story, mixing existential angst, sexual fantasy and military action.'Indes scheint Sánchez Piñol entschlossen, all das, was etwa bei Lem durch die poetische Kraft der Worte und der Bilder getragen wird, als explizite Thesen zu formulieren - sehr zum Nachteil seines Romans.' - Florian Borchmeyer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.'(B)oth a tightly wound thriller and a fantastical horror novel.' - Gilbert Cruz, Entertainment Weekly.Most generally impressed - good Lovecraft, or Lovecraft-imitation Cold Skin was made into a movie in 2017, directed by Xavier Gens and starring Ray Stevenson.

In his review in The Independent () Michael Eaude notes that 'some 15 early pages explaining the narrator's background as an IRA volunteer in the 1920s have been left out.'.

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La pell freda by Albert Sánchez Piñol