Spoiler Alert – Best read after chapter 15 of the first volume, The Hammer

  The Journey to the Cor belongs to the Subterranean Fiction subgenre—Speculative Fiction stories that take place underground (see ).

  A relatively specialized type of fiction, one of its best-known examples is Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne (1864). A later edition was more aptly titled “Journey to the Interior of the Earth” as the story only went 87 miles down and a journey to the centre of the earth is almost 4000 miles.

  A more recent and well-known underground world is J. R. R. Tolkien’s Moria, a subterranean labyrinth of tunnels, chambers, and halls under the Misty Mountains. Moria was my first exposure to underground fantasy but only if you don’t count Alice in Wonderland, which was originally titled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.

  The Dark Elf Trilogy (1990–1991) by R. A. Salvatore explores an underground world called the Underdark. His books launched a new era of underground settings in both novels and fantasy role playing games. I have experienced his influence firsthand while playing DND with my children and grandchildren.

  Long before our fictional stories, people were continually fascinated by caves—a dark doorway into the unknown that draws people in with the promise of adventure. I succumbed to that pull a few years back and went adventure caving with my daughter. At a designate low crack at the base of a wall, our guide tested our ability to wiggle through a small space. I ended up getting stuck and needed help to pull me back out. It’s amazing how quickly your fear ramps up when you feel so helpless. It didn’t help that I had recently read the story of Floyd Collins that is mentioned in Chapter 15 of the first volume of Journey to the Cor ().

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Later in our caving adventure we had to navigate what they aptly called, The Laundry Chute, a small hole in the floor that you dropped in feet first, then bent your legs forwards while wedging yourself deeper into the constricted opening. If you could make it through you then continued to shuffle feet first through a horizontal crack, not knowing if you would make it or not. Having been informed that a person had become stuck in this part of the cave, and it required a lengthy rescue procedure did not help matters. To this day, even as write this article, I feel the increased tension in my chest as I recall fighting the overwhelming panic that was surging through my body at the time. All those emotions came into play as I wrote chapter 15 the first volume, The Hammer.

  At that point in the story, Corvan recalls a diagram in a caving book where they freed a trapped caver by breaking one of their collarbones and moving the shoulder in so the rest of the person’s body could come free. I had broken my collarbone as a 5-year-old child and could clearly recall that bone on bone crunch as I moved my arm. Although I have never located that caving book or any account that describes the collarbone technique, but I must have picked it up when I was much younger as it came immediately to mind when Corvan became trapped.

  I have been in a few tourist caves and walked well-worn pathways inside expansive well-lit caverns. I have now decided I prefer those over the excitement of adventure caving with its narrow crawls and low ceilings.