Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Cold to the Touch

by Simon Strantzas (Goodreads Author), Reggie Oliver (Foreword), J.D. Busch (Illustrator)

4.42 of 5 stars 4.42 · rating details · 40 ratings · 8 reviews

Reality is a thin translucent membrane that separates this world from the one beyond, and that membrane bends and buckles as we thrust ourselves against it. Through the barrier we see distorted visions, the merest glimpse of which is enough to infect our minds. . . .

Thirteen tales of strangeness and surrealism await the reader of this book; stories of loss, despair, and wh...more

Paperback and Deluxe Hardcover, 206 pages

Published July 17th 2012 by Dark Regions Press (first published July 29th 2009)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 408)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Sep 09, 2010 Sarah L. Covert rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who likes Horror, Strange Tales, Dark Fantasy or Short Stories

Shelves: she-never-slept

Simon Strantzas is the author of two twisted collections of strange tales and horrific adventures. His first book was Beneath the Surface published by Humdrumming Press. (I haven’t had the pleasure of reading this collection yet, but I hope to track it down.) The second book is entitled Cold to the Touch. (According to his website – a third collection is being created – I will keep my eyes peeled.) When I did my first book review on SNS I spoke about the great masters of the short story, like Po...more Simon Strantzas is the author of two twisted collections of strange tales and horrific adventures. His first book was Beneath the Surface published by Humdrumming Press. (I haven’t had the pleasure of reading this collection yet, but I hope to track it down.) The second book is entitled Cold to the Touch. (According to his website – a third collection is being created – I will keep my eyes peeled.) When I did my first book review on SNS I spoke about the great masters of the short story, like Poe, Lovecraft, Twain… I spoke of how I longed for a new generation of that ilk. If there is a renaissance happening in short stories, writers like Simon Strantzas are leading the way.

Simon’s stories range from frightening to painful, from sad to wickedly delightful. One thing is certain, Mr. Strantzas ripped out a bit of his soul and threw it onto the page with a violent beauty. Such stories could come from no other place. This collection is evocative, endearing, strange and horrifying all at once. I am reading it a second time now, but have to put it away — others wait.

All of the stories in this collection are delightfully dark and wonderfully weird. There were moments where I thought Strantzas’ writing was a bit too cordial. But they were brief and his characterizations were so compelling, that those fleeting moments were easily forgotten. Currently I have two favorites from this collection, so I will focus in on those. I know that it is easy to give a short story away, so I promise these bits will be spoiler free!

The Other Village

This weird tale centers around two Canadian women who are on a holiday to the Mediterranean. It is clear from the beginning of the story that their friendship is rocky. They hadn’t spoken in some time and both went on the trip anyway. It may have been out of spite or obligation or simply the fact they already spent the money. Whatever the case, they were stuck with each other. They come across a shady guide who offers to take them to “the real places. They leave their legitimate tour and that’s when the real excitement begins. This story is well woven. I felt involved with its characters. It has all the elements I love in a strange tale. I have always believed the unseen is often far more terrifying than what we are shown and this short verifies that. The Other Village does an excellent job of getting your heart pumping and it has a deliciously satisfying ending.

A Seed On Barren Ground

This strange story is about a woman who suffers great loss, only to suffer more. She is referred to a mysterious festival in the middle of nowhere. All she wants is for her suffering to end, for things to return to normal. She becomes convinced that this festival may somehow give her this. When she arrives at the festival she discovers it has long been over, but a mysterious tent still stands and there are people gathered inside. This captivating tale brought waves of emotion. I felt the sorrow of the main character and was invested in her journey. I felt the heat of the desert, and her heavy, heavy pain. A Seed on Barren Ground took some unexpected, well-executed turns and I happily went along for the ride.

Final thoughts:
Simon Strantzas invites you in and leads you around his universe with the grace of a ballroom dancer. His style is elegant and haunting and as a reader you feel drawn to each story in a unique way. I am looking forward to more work from this author. This book will hold a permanent place in my collection. I recommend Cold to the Touch to anyone who likes Horror, Strange Tales, Dark Fantasy or Short Stories.

(Read the full review with links and images here: http://sheneverslept.com/newsandrevie... )(less)

1 like · like · see review

Dec 09, 2012 Tim Martin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed, horror

This was a hard book for me to rate. It is not the book I thought that it was, and I am not sure if that colored my thoughts as to whether or not I liked it. I knew that it would be a more subtle horror book before I started reading it from the reviews and general information about the book, not one filled with obvious threats like Cthulhu-like monsters, zombies, or werewolves. That’s fine, a more subtle horror story, perhaps one that was a bit more atmospheric than monstrous, would be enjoyable...more This was a hard book for me to rate. It is not the book I thought that it was, and I am not sure if that colored my thoughts as to whether or not I liked it. I knew that it would be a more subtle horror book before I started reading it from the reviews and general information about the book, not one filled with obvious threats like Cthulhu-like monsters, zombies, or werewolves. That’s fine, a more subtle horror story, perhaps one that was a bit more atmospheric than monstrous, would be enjoyable too, maybe something Twight Zone-esque. To me though, the horror element is perhaps too subtle. One reviewer compared the author’s writing to Kafka and to me that is apt for several reasons. One, the writing is good, the atmosphere often excellent; by no means is this book badly written. Two, perhaps like Kafka, the horror is hardly typical or paint by numbers as it were; the horror here in this book is more about what a strange visitor to a party represents or is capable of, or why music one hears from a neighboring apartment is endlessly on one’s mind …subtle things that could perhaps happen in real life, generally nothing so obviously horrific (and fantastical) as zombies breaking down the back door for instance. Many of them are almost real world stories with slight- sometimes very slight- supernatural or just weird twists.

Are they too slight though? Some have a nice dream like quality, and if they were stand alone stories in the anthology they would be just fine. The mysterious, almost mystical feel of _A Chorus of Yesterdays_ by way of example, with the narrator’s strange dreams and the ethereal quality of the music in the apartment below him, music he can’t quite place but drives him to distraction trying to uncover just what piece that is, that is just the sort of mood piece that would be good in any horror anthology. The narrator of that short story imagines things about his unseen neighbor and when he does finally encounter the man walks away with more questions than answers. Nicely written and with memorable imagery, but the horror aspect was super slight if it was even there at all; it was just an odd encounter, and the horror element could have been explained away as something else.

To many that criticism holds true for the entirety of the book pretty much, that the horror or supernatural element is almost whisper thin. Sometimes though, I will admit, it is not. On occasion the horrific elements are bold and unmistakable, from the odd and horrific seeds of _A Seed on Barren Ground_ to the scary birds of _The Sweetest Song_ but here again the author takes a Kafkaesque turn; the horror becomes abstract, often very abstract. It is definitely there, quite visible, definitely supernatural and horrific, but what It All Means is hard to discern. Perhaps there is an element of Man Was Not Meant to Know, as in the Lovecraftian tradition, that if mortals really saw what was out there and how the universe really worked it would drive one insane. That is great, I love that tradition in genre fiction, but at a fundamental level in the story I often just don’t know what happened even in terms of describing the action. Some of that is from the often dream-like feel of the stories, but some is perhaps because to me the story is perhaps too metaphorical. Maybe this book would be superb in a literature class, with students and professor dissecting the meaning of each tale, but as for this reader, I was just lost at times.

Having said that the stories are still evocative and stuck with me, perhaps from the rich and eerie imagery, perhaps from just wanting to puzzle out the meaning of the story, maybe even out of a little frustration. The stories certainly challenged me, I will give the author that!

One element that put me off though and it is not one that I counted on, was the central characters/narrators of the various short stories were generally loners, alienated from society for various reasons to varying degrees (or at least alienated from other characters in the story). What other people they meet in their stories are either odd enigmas, their motives impenetrable, or brash, annoying, rude, loud people, “friends” that they can barely stand perhaps, or outright strangers they just want to leave. I did think it an interesting exercise to decide if the annoying people in the stories either were really annoying or that is just how they appear to a loner, a person that prefers the silence of winter woods to the cacophony of a crowded holiday party. That thread - one of loners, perhaps people always striving for solitude, maybe people who have come to seek it after bad experiences – appeared to be a thread prevalent through many of the stories. Whether or not the loner aspect of many of the people opened them up to whatever horror took place in each story is an interesting question; maybe they more attune to noticing such things, or more vulnerable to the threat that the represented. It did give a sometimes cold and impersonal feel to some of the stories (and in that reminded me of Lovecraft, with so many of his stories one man’s view of What Happened, rather than stories rich in dialogue and the development of multiple characters).

Perhaps in the end the issue of whether or not I liked _Cold to the Touch_ comes down to whether or not I liked Kafka’s works. I read a number of Kafka’s stories in college and while I admired the writing and even chose him as my subject matter in semester project in a literature class, I can’t say I really enjoyed them. I do think Simon Strantzas is a skilled author and his stories veered away from Kafkaesque I would like them more. I would to see some more Lovecraftian by him, with more obvious horrors, as his grasp of atmosphere, mood, and narrative writing are very good indeed.
(less)

like · see review

Sep 26, 2011 Benjamin Uminsky rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, fantastic-weird-lit, tartarus-press

This was a great introduction for me to Simon Strantzas' work. To this point I have heard excellent things and was ultimately compelled to track down this not-so-easy to find collection from Tartarus Press. So here is the thing, I gave this one 5 stars because as a collection, it is closer to 5 stars than to 4 stars. I can't really say that there was a single story in the collection that left me blown away, but story for story, this may be one of the strongest collections I have read in some tim...more This was a great introduction for me to Simon Strantzas' work. To this point I have heard excellent things and was ultimately compelled to track down this not-so-easy to find collection from Tartarus Press. So here is the thing, I gave this one 5 stars because as a collection, it is closer to 5 stars than to 4 stars. I can't really say that there was a single story in the collection that left me blown away, but story for story, this may be one of the strongest collections I have read in some time.

The problem with a lot of outstanding short story collections is you will get some real stand outs and potentially get a few duds (I have certainly noticed this in some of the 5 star collections I have read). In this case, there were no duds and a lot of really solid to excellent stories. In his afterword, Strantzas tells us that unlike his first collection BENEATH THE SURFACE, COLD TO THE TOUCH is missing that unifying theme for the collection. While that may be true, I felt that there were quite a few elements that could be found in many of the stories that left the collection feeling linked. The mood and atmosphere building for each of the stories was phenomenal (ranging from viscerally depressing to urbanly claustrophobic to overwhelmingly nostalgic) and the character development was also excellent (often painting social awkwardness and misanthropy into his characters). While I would agree with Strantzas (a la his afterword) that there is a good deal of Lieber's urban brushstrokes found throughout his stories, I think I also saw a good deal of Joel Lane in his treatment of his characters.

We see that decay and withering of the soul and also misanthropic overtones in his characters similar to Lane. However, as a credit to Strantzas, I felt his stories actually took his characters to interesting places and allow for the reader to be both captivated by character interaction and by the stories themselves. I'm really happy to have read this collection and certainly look forward to more of his writing.

While I did say that no single story from this collection distinguished itself more than any other story, a few do come to mind, particularly in how the horror was evoked through very strong grotesque imagery.

"A Seed on Barren ground"
The wish granting in this story is what gives us the grotesque imagery (almost like birthing a still born), and it was really strange mind you. Likewise, I could literally feel myself baking in the heat (akin to hanging out at the Bakersfield County Fair in the middle of the summer) along with the main character and I could also grasp the growing desperation as the main character waited for her number to be called. This one really drew upon all of your senses as a reader.

"Under the Overpass"
This one reminded me a lot of Braunbeck's incredibly melancholy life-is-full-of regret tale, "Smiling Faces Sometimes". The stoning of one of the kids was really painful to read through and evoked a similar level of grotesqueness as some of his other tales in this collection. You kind of new where it was going but the dread leading up to that critical moment in the story really gets you.

A great collection!! Highly recommended.
(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 16, 2013 Fred Hughes rated it 3 of 5 stars

With an appropriate 13 different stories to deliver Simon Strantzas has delivered horror stories at all levels and from all angles. All the stories are bite size and thus develop quickly. Characters are sketched out and are flushed out as the story proceeds.

Horror is a visceral feeling and what is a horror to you may not be to another person. However Stranzas approaches the genre from so many different angles that he pretty well has horror stories fully embraced and ready for the reader to enjoy...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 26, 2010 Gemma Files rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A fine collection of horror short stories which are light on the grue, heavy on the existential dread. At his best—as with tales like “Pinholes in Black Muslin”, “Fading Light” and the title entry—Stranzas’ narrative voice reminds me strongly of a young Ramsey Campbell, though he can also be a bit too Kafka-esque for his own good, trading pleasant obliqueness for total unintelligibility.

like · see review

Dec 09, 2012 Cathie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Cathie by: GoodReads - signed, numbered by the author

Shelves: horror, own-signed, first-reads-arcs, canadian-authors, short-stories, suspense, canada

A very good collection of horror/paranormal short stories. Reading this book reminded me of the old television series The Twilight Zone. I couldn't wait to see how each story ended, what the twist was. The past is never the past. Sometimes monsters are real. Sometimes we are the monsters. 4.5 stars.

like · see review

Jun 03, 2011 Charles rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A solid book of short stories in an excellent psychological style. I preferred "Beneath the Surface" most likely due to its Lovecraft/Ligotti influence, but this one is excellent as well.

1 like · like · see review

Aug 11, 2012 Tina Marlene rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is full of very well written strange tales. If you appreciate literary dark and weird stories then read this book!

like · see review

May 17, 2013 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 16, 2013 Azathoth R'lyeh marked it as to-read

May 05, 2013 Jerome Luc marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: tartarus-press

Apr 24, 2013 Mike Albright marked it as to-read

Apr 20, 2013 Samir Rawas Sarayji marked it as to-read

Apr 17, 2013 Alisha rated it 4 of 5 stars

Apr 19, 2013 Randolph Carter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, horror, strange-stories

Apr 04, 2013 Tyler Reedy marked it as to-read

Apr 04, 2013 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Mar 23, 2013 Justin Steele rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mar 11, 2013 C.M. Muller rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mar 10, 2013 Vicki marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Mar 08, 2013 Sebastian Fuentes marked it as to-read

Feb 12, 2013 Donna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: canadian-authors, dark-regions-press, collection, signed-limited

Feb 08, 2013 Barry marked it as to-read

Mar 23, 2013 Christian is currently reading it

Shelves: fiction, horror, weird-fiction

Feb 24, 2013 Lois Gresh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: dark-fantasy-horror

Jan 23, 2013 Claus added it · review of another edition

Jan 12, 2013 Squire marked it as owned-unread

Dec 22, 2012 Patrickmalka marked it as to-read

Dec 08, 2012 Katy marked it as to-read

Jan 22, 2013 Ross Scott-buccleuch rated it 4 of 5 stars

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 13 14 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (1)

Genres

Horror

7 users

Short Stories

2 users

See top shelves...

About Simon Strantzas

Simon Strantzas is the author of Nightingale Songs, Beneath the Surface and Cold to the Touch and has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. His work has been appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (ed. Stephen Jones), The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror (edited by Paula Guran), Cemetery Dance, and Postscripts. Born in the harsh darkness of the Canadian winter, he has no inte...more

More about Simon Strantzas...

Books by Simon Strantzas

Beneath the Surface (Revised & Expanded)

Mammoth Books Presents Cold to the Touch

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Cold to the Touch

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Cold to the Touch
avg rating	preview: Cold to the Touch Goodreads rating: 4.42 (40 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15757130-cold-to-the-touch?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1342564913l/15757130.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15757130-cold-to-the-touch?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Cold to the Touch by Simon Strantzas[/url]

Cold to the Touch

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

combineOther Editions (1)

Genres

About Simon Strantzas

Books by Simon Strantzas

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Cold to the Touch

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (1)