Immemorial Year Books in Order

The Immemorial Year books take Klune into much darker territory. This is a post-apocalyptic story, stripped down and raw, where the world has already burned and nobody is pretending things will be easy. The first book, Withered + Sere, opens long after the catastrophe, in a ruined America where survival has narrowed life down to instinct, memory, and whatever scraps of connection people can still hold on to.

At the center is Cavalo, a man living in the wreckage of the North Idaho Correctional Institution with only Bad Dog and an increasingly unstable robot for company. He is isolated on purpose. That matters. The series is not just about surviving a broken world. It is about what isolation does to a person, and what happens when someone new breaks through the defenses that isolation has built.

It is bleak, but never empty.

When Cavalo is forced into contact with Lucas, the series picks up its main emotional and narrative thread. Their bond is tangled from the start, shaped by mistrust, violence, dependence, and need. Crisped + Sere sharpens all of that by putting pressure on them from the outside. There are towns to protect, enemies closing in, and a secret literally written into Lucas's skin that makes the future feel both bigger and more dangerous.

The setting does a lot of work here. These books are full of ruins, cold weather, desperation, and the feeling that civilization has not ended so much as curdled. Yet Klune still finds space for tenderness, dark humor, and companionship. That balance is what gives the duo its pull. It is harsh world building, but it is still interested in love, trust, and the possibility that damaged people can choose each other anyway.

If you are coming from Klune's softer fantasy, Immemorial Year can be a surprise. The tone is harder. The violence is closer. The emotional beats are rougher around the edges. But the same core concerns are still there: found family, queer love, sacrifice, and the fight to stay human when the world keeps pushing in the opposite direction.

Read this series if you want apocalypse with teeth, not just scenery. Withered + Sere and Crisped + Sere are built on dread, survival, and a relationship that becomes more important the more dangerous the world gets.