Literature / Immemorial Year

The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they were crisped and sere—

The leaves they were withering and sere;

It was night in the lonesome October

Of my most immemorial year.

— "Ulalume" by Edgar Allen Poe

The Immemorial Year duology is a two book series by TJ Klune.

One hundred years after the end of the world, a man named Cavalo has made a life for himself. He hunts for food, he maintains the remains of the prison he calls home, he ignores the ghosts in his head, and he tries to avoid the local town and its too-many people— even the few there he can call friends. After all, the only two people he really needs are his dog, Bad Dog, whose voice Cavalo is pretty sure he can hear in his head, and SIRS, the corrupted security robot that still dwells in the prison.

Unfortunately, after a hunting trip gone awry, Cavalo finds himself thrust out of his rut and in possession of a dangerous hostage; a member of the feared Dead Rabbit raider group. The Dead Rabbits are notorious cannibals and murderers lurking in the irradiated Deadlands, coming out only to Rape, Pillage, and Burn. But there's something unusual about this Dead Rabbit, and the secret he carries may change everything...

The books in the series are:

1. Withered + Sere (2016)
2. Crisped + Sere (2016)

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Provides examples of:

• After the End: The story takes place one hundred years after a nuclear war.
• Ax-Crazy: All of the Dead Rabbits are insane, cannibalistic murderers, with their mental degradation hinted to be linked to the fact they live in the irradiated Deadlands. Lucas is more put-together than most of them, but he is also violent and crazy, and spends much of the novel either trying to kill Cavalo or, after his Heel–Face Turn, trying to stop himself from killing Cavalo.
• Canine Companion: Bad Dog to Cavalo. Cavalo rescued Bad Dog from a pair of Dead Rabbits back when Bad Dog was a puppy, and the two have been together ever since.
• Category Traitor: Lucas, to the Dead Rabbits.
• Decoy Protagonist: Withered opens with the narration following the unnamed president of the United States as he prepares to inform the nation of the impending nuclear destruction. We see him interacting with his family and his security personnel and following his thoughts and worries about the situation. Then a bomb in a suitcase goes off forty feet away from the helicopter he was boarding. The rest of the novel follows Cavalo as he survives the post-apocalyptic world one hundred years later.
• The Dreaded: By the end of the second book, Cavalo has become this to the Dead Rabbits. Patrick mentions how they tell stories about him like he's a monster hidden in the forest.
• Eccentric A.I.: SIRS is a robot security system for a prison, and in the years since the collapse of civilisation SIRS' processors have degraded to the point where he considers himself "insane." The result is that he's become an agoraphobic deadpan snarker capable of caring about those around him. During conversations, he will sporadically start shouting or quoting literature, then continue his initial sentence without realizing anything happened. Numerous references to Pinocchio are mentioned, and SIRS is implied to see this deterioration as a step towards personhood as it frees him on some level from his original coding.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: SIRS is a security robot designed to run the prison where Cavalo lives. Due to the "insanity" caused by his internal systems deteriorating, he has gained a personality and is capable of compassion, friendship, and snark. He frequently makes allusions to Pinocchio and jokes that Cavalo is hi "Blue Fairy," and that their friendship is bringing SIRS closer to true freedom and personhood. The difference between current SIRS and the original programming is shown when Patrick uses the failsafe codes to return SIRS to his original programming.
• Literary Allusion Title: The title of both novels and the duology itself are all from the poem Ulalume by Edgar Allen Poe. Hank gives a copy of the first few verses to Cavalo, feeling like he would resonate with it.
• Lost Technology: Cavalo muses about how much knowledge of technology and medicine has been lost. He's heard stories about how in the "Before" times there were machines that could detect illnesses and how people did not commonly die of minor infections and injuries due to the medicines and treatments they had.
• Low Culture, High Tech: Under Patrick's leadership, the Dead Rabbits have amassed advanced "Before" weaponry including guns, rocket launchers, and a working helicopter.
• Loyal Animal Companion: Bad Dog, who follows Cavalo everywhere, and whom Cavalo frequently imagines is speaking to him.
• The Masochism Tango: Cavalo and Lucas are both deeply unwell individuals with "bees" in their heads and murderous instincts. The first novel is the two of them alternately attempting to murder one another and save each other's life. Even after the two become lovers, Lucas still has to resist the urge to murder Cavalo in his sleep.
• May–December Romance: Cavalo is forty, and Lucas is twenty-three. While the people around Cavalo are uncertain of their relationship, it's due to the fact that Lucas is a deranged murderer from a clan of cannibals as opposed to the age difference.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Cavalo has entire conversations with Bad Dog and Lucas, the former of which is a dog and the latter of which is mute. When Cavalo has one of his frequent dissociative episodes, one of the things he wonders is if he is crazier than he realizes, and that neither Bad Dog nor Lucas are actually communicating with him. Despite this, Both bad Dog and Lucas behave as though he understands them, and they understand him, so if Cavalo does have some kind of mental link with them, it's completely unexplained.
• Post-Apocalyptic Dog: Bad Dog is Cavalo's best friend. Cavalo is pretty sure (usually) that he hears Bad Dog's voice in his head, and the to are very rarely apart.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: The Dead Rabbits' modus operandi. They kidnap people to torture, rape, kill, and eat — and not always in that order.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Cavalo is sane enough to know that he is certainly losing his mind. He often hears ghosts of the dead in his life calling to him, frequently hallucinates his dead son and wife, and has malevolent voices in his head that buzz around him like bees who become a character unto themselves. He also hears his dog talking to him, but as far as he's concerned, that's more real than the other voices. After finding Lucas, Cavalo starts envisioning his own sanity like a ball of rubber bands and begins keeping track every time he can feel a band of sanity snapping in his head.
  • SIRS is a robot whose processors are deteriorating, resulting in fits of "insanity." During conversations, he will sporadically start shouting or quoting literature, then continue his initial sentence without realizing anything happened. Numerous references to Pinocchio are mentioned, and SIRS is implied to see this deterioration as freeing him on some level from his original coding and a step towards personhood.
• Scavenger World: Many of the characters we meet are trying to salvage "Before" tech. Some towns have figured out how to get electricity working by salvaging old tech, and Cottonwood has a water purifier they've been maintaining for years. There are rumors of a working car back east, everyone tries to find weapons, ammunition, and medicine, and Patrick's got schematics on how to recreate a lot of lost technology, his main plan is to get possession of a hydroelectric dam and get it working again, and his Dead Rabbit manage to cobble together not only weapons, but a functional helicopter.
• Schizo Tech: Electricity is scarce and only some towns have it. Working guns are hard to come by, their ammunition even more so. Most of the hunting and fighting is done with bows, arrows, knives, and spears. But there are also high tech remnants of the "Before" time, including frag grenades, land mines, rocket launchers, and a powerful and neurotic security robot whose deteriorating processors make him a more literal example of Schizo Tech.
• Silicon Snarker: Though SIRS very clearly cares about Cavalo, that doesn't stop him from snarking at him whenever Cavalo does anything stupid or dangerous.
• Yandere: Once Lucas decides to stop trying to kill Cavalo and the two become something of an item, Lucas becomes murderously zealous about keeping him for himself. It takes the span of two novel for Lucas to sleep next to Cavalo without having his knife trained on him, even after the two are lovers.
  Cavalo: And you killed them. To save us.
  Lucas: Yes. Goddamn you. Yes. Yes. They were trying to hurt you. They were trying to take you away. Yes. I killed them. And I would do it again. I would kill anyone who tried to take you away. And I will kill you if you ever leave.