Tough Traveling: Hidden Kingdom

The Thursday feature “Tough Traveling” is the brainchild of Nathan of Review Barn, who has come up with the excellent idea of making a new list each week based on the most common tropes in fantasy, as seen in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynn Jones. Nathan has invited anyone who is interested to come play along, so be sure to check out the first link for more information. Compulsive list-maker that I am, I’m very excited to take part!

This week’s tour topic is: Hidden Kingdom

Usually reached through CAVERNS or after an arduous trek into the heart of the central masssif, this is often the object of the Tour QUEST…

I’ll be honest, when I saw this week’s topic, I drew a big blank. There are plenty of hidden worlds I can think of, but most of those involve jumping through portals and planes existing on completely different realms. A lot of the ones I can think of that are hidden beneath the earth or in a mountain are actually ruins or untamed “lost worlds” that aren’t exactly kingdoms. Maybe I’m overthinking things, but I was only able to come up with a few this week. Hey, just be glad I didn’t whip out Otoh Gunga from The Phantom Menace novelization!

Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan
The first book I thought of when I saw this topic was of course Hollow World, a cross-genre novel about a man with a terminal disease traveling into the future to find a cure. What he finds is an earth overgrown, seemingly devoid of much activity on the surface. But then he is brought below ground into a hollow world, where the denizens of the time had created an impressive civilization beneath the earth, complete with its own solar source.

Stolen Songbird by Danielle L. Jensen
Stolen Songbird is a book I recently read that fits the theme. Though later we find out that Trollus isn’t completely hidden, since some merchants know the way to trade there, but for the most part the existence of the troll city is but a mere rumor. This kingdom was buried under the ruins of Forsaken Mountain five hundred years ago by a witch’s curse, and since then the trolls have been bound to this place beneath the earth and rock. The main character Cécile was kidnapped and brought here through an underwater passage and a series of confusing caverns. This one totally counts!

The Silk Map by Chriss Willrich 
Dammit, now I’m second guessing myself. Does this book really count? I know in this latest installment of the Gaunt and Bone series our dynamic duo have to travel far to the west to find the mythical land of Xembala. These books have a bit of a surreal quality to them, so it was a bit hard to follow exactly how our heroes actually managed to make it to Xembala. But it is a kingdom and it did actually exist and it was well-hidden. That, and because I’ll only have a paltry two entries otherwise this week is why I’m gonna count it!