Book Review: ‘Burrowed’ by Mary Baader Kaley

Burrowed is the debut novel by Mary Baader Kaley. This dystopian story explores a divided post-apocalyptic world.

After they were ravaged by a plague, humanity evolved into two different forms. Above ground are the Omniterraneans who have larger physical forms and robust immune systems. Forced to live underground due to their highly weakened immune systems are the Subterraneans. They are physically smaller and often display albino characteristics however they are also significantly more intelligent.

Burrowed follows the journey of one Subterranean girl – Zuzan Cayan. With her pale skin, patchy hair that refuses to grow, and light-sensitivity that causes her to wear shaded goggles at all times, Zuzan’s appearance is extreme even by her people’s standards. Her physical appearance causes many to judge her before getting to know her. Zuzan is often made to feel like an outcast and her struggles at making new friends means the reader immediately feels sympathy for her. But she is far from weak.

With a perfect memory and the ability to easily find patterns in data, Zuzan is amongst the most intelligent of the underground dwellers. She can find solutions to problems that others can’t. As a result, Zuzan is tasked with resolving the ultimate problem – how to fix the genetic divide between the two halves of humanity.

Zuzan is not without her imperfections. She is both stubborn and head-strong and, because she has never answered a test question wrong in her life, she can sometimes come across as arrogant when instructing others. But Zuzan’s most defining characteristic, and the reason she works so well as a protagonist, is that her heart is always in the right place. Everything she does is in an effort to try to help others – even if it puts her own life at risk.

One of the reasons I enjoy dystopian novels so much is the world building. As the story is told from Zuzan’s point of view we only hear fragments about how Omniterraneans live but the book maps out the whole society structure for the Subterranean civilisation. From infants to adulthood, the population is expected to follow a particular structured journey through life. How a person develops and the type of person they grow into is typically affected by the burrow and leader they find themselves living under. All of the author’s descriptions made it easy for me to picture the settings featured in the story.

Inspired by the author’s personal family struggles with genetic diseases, Burrowed is (as of 2025) a stand-alone novel however the story is left open-ended so it is possible that Mary Baader Kaley may chose to return to this world in the future.

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