Magical and whisical, dark and horrifying, Golden seems to be able to do it all with a child-like wonder that is infectious. ( )

I know Christopher Golden's work primarily at novel length, but he has written some short fiction and The Secret Backs of Things collects those stories for the first time. I think of his writing as fantasy for the most part, but this collection includes quite a bit of dark fantasy and outright horror (not surprising, as it's published by Cemetery Dance). Golden is particularly interested in myth, however, and so even though there are some hardcore horror tales here ("The Urge," "Burning Questions"), there's also a lot of interesting uses of mythic figures and tropes. He's also written some Hellboy stories (with the blessing, and sometimes collaboration, of creator Mike Mignola), and those are quite funny. Overall, I've always found his writing to be elegant and sometimes poetic; not that he's above the use of coarse language (he uses a lot of it, in fact), but his imagery, even the scary ones, always feel pure to me. As with any collection, some stories appeal more than others, but I think anyone with an interest in good writing would enjoy the novella, "The Shell Collector" and I also particularly liked the title story and the closing one, "The Mournful Cry of Owls," with its interesting Albanian take on what I've always known as a Welsh myth. A very enjoyable (if sometimes gory) collection, this particular special edition with wonderful illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne; recommended. ( )