Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

In the anthology Undercity by Monte Schulz, we primarily move alongside Marco Grenelle, through a city consumed by fire after a coordinated attack forces the residents into flight. He travels with Geismar Brecht while searching for Mirés Grillet, a performer whose path leads into a vast underground network where displaced people attempt to survive beyond the reach of collapsing authority. As Marco follows routes through hidden tunnels, guarded passages, and improvised settlements, he works to regroup with Mirés and Pyrénée, a young woman affected by a violent past, while guiding Mirés’s mother Margéry through worsening conditions. Their movement is driven by the need to secure safety and reach known contacts, yet each step brings them into closer contact with forces responsible for the destruction above, placing Marco in direct conflict with those controlling the city’s fate.

Undercity by Monte Schulz leans into what could happen when a government classifies human worth through biology and enforces removal. Eerily, this system mirrors real policies that rank lives through access to care and movement. I was uncomfortably aware of the inclusion of atrocities, like a horrific moment in a crowded underground settlement where displaced residents live in tight quarters. This is a dystopia that Schulz lays bare in nuggets of reality, and that is what makes it so strong. Still, there is kindness, and Schulz gives ancillary characters the same full fleshing out as the main cast. Hubert Huxley is the most fascinating to me, with his role being to assess people brought before a government body that evaluates citizens for biological fitness—and possible removal. The settings are textured and visual, from Piña Libro, a vast underground marketplace where people trade goods, to Lac du Lachrymose, a subterranean lake crowded with refugees and drifting bodies, where torchlight reveals smoke and ash settling over the water. This is an anthology, but Schulz blends the vignettes into a narrative worth every moment spent on its pages. Very highly recommended.