| Khroniki Pepelnoi Vesny |
Chronicles of the Ashen spring. Medieval-post-ap series of novels. Ripol. Moscow 2025. approx. 270-300 pages each. |
A dark past has come instead of a bright future. In those post-apocalyptic New Middle Ages, where the skies are choked with ash and science is deemed heresy, a young inquisitor investigates witchcraft cases, desperately seeking reality and truth where everyone else sees only delusion and sorcery. Each book is an investigation of a witch case.
Seventeen centuries have passed since a global nuclear catastrophe, called the Great Scourge – that nearly wiped out humankind. Nearly, but not completely. The survivors gathered in a geothermal region, the Blessed Islands; the geysers and volcanoes had enabled them to endure the long nuclear winter. Having lost all knowledge and technology from the old way of life/ acquired by previous generations, humanity has entered a new cycle and has now regressed to the stage of development seen in a medieval society. The climate has changed, dark snow falls from the perpetually ashen skies. The gods have changed, people worship the Great Gee, Who Knows the Answer to Every Question – but who exactly is this deity passed down through oral traditions: a Jesus or GPT? People's beliefs, life expectancy, and physiology have changed as well: you're a decrepit elder by 35, if you live even that long. Most animals are extinct, while insects have grown to monstrous size and changed their biological makeup. Ants are now the size of horses, can be ridden, and are called megants. Human physiology has changed as well: for instance, women are “in the heat” once a year, and during this period, men are powerless before their scent.
Much has changed, but human behavior has not. The New Middle Ages painfully mirror the old ones. There is witch-hunting, obscurantism, and the Inquisition. There's social stratification with noble families on the one end and lowborn commoners deprived of basic rights on the other. Wild superstitions flourish. For example, when twins are born, one of them should be killed immediately: “for he is conceived of the devil’s seed, without a soul, and born of Malice.” Because of rapid cell division, twins are born very often. The scientific cause of this uncanny, and sometimes malignant proliferation of cells has long been forgotten but still terrifies ordinary people. In this world, the notions of malice and malignancy have fused together.
On the horizon glimmers a new Enlightenment, yet rational thought remains heresy. The only guardians of scientific and technical knowledge are a handful of people who live in a secret underground shelter and are called the Hidden Folk. Dark rumors swirl about them: they resurrect corpses, steal soulless infants from graves, and are themselves neither alive nor dead.
SERIES
The protagonist of the series is Abbot Kay, a 23-year-old inquisitor and investigator. Though young by our standards, he is considered mature in this world of accelerated life. Kay is progressive for his time: he refuses to use torture in his investigations, relying instead on evidence, witness testimony, and something resembling deductive reasoning. He scandalizes society by bathing nearly every day. He is deeply attached to his megant. In many ways, he is already a man of the Enlightenment, yet he still believes in witchcraft. It is precisely this tension between the magical and the rational that creates the unique genre structure, allowing the story to shift from detective fiction into fantasy and back again without breaking the logically constructed detective intrigue.
Each book presents a separate witchcraft case. Kay must either prove logically that a woman is innocent, or condemn her as a witch, thereby sentencing her to death. For the audience, however, the explanation is always materialistic. The “rules of the game” assume that biological mutations and a post-apocalyptic “shift” exist in this world, but there is no magic, no witches. Every seemingly magical phenomenon must have a material explanation. The catch is that Kay does not always see this explanation and does not always believe it. He makes mistakes, yet gradually moves closer and closer to the truth.
WHY THIS STORY? A personal answer by the author
I believe that now, as in the 1930s and 1940s, it is once again the time for dystopias, for dark forecasts and dire warnings. A time to intensify the shadows and take a hard look into the world after its end.
One of the key symbolic scenes in this story is what is called the Carousel of Death. A column of giant ants marches along a trail. At some point, they veer off, laying down a new pheromone track. Realizing their mistake, they return to the original path, - only to stray again, and again, circling endlessly in a desperate attempt to keep going the “right” way, until at last they collapse, dead from exhaustion and hunger. This is a real phenomenon among ants, - but the cursed carousel is no stranger to humans either. We too repeat the same errors, circle after circle: staging witch hunts, ignoring nuclear threats, sliding back into a dark Middle Ages of prejudice and black-and-white thinking.
I am drawn to the idea of dystopian authors as “canaries in the coal mine”, whose role is to cry out piercingly at the approach of danger, sensing the toxic gas before anyone else. Perhaps now it is time for the canaries to warn of a toxic future where no canaries remain at all.
Yet even within this dark vision of the future, there must be room for a glimmer of hope, gradually embodied by the protagonist.
And it is the strong, suspenseful intrigue of the detective quest that keeps the audience engaged: an absorbing narrative engine that prevents the story from collapsing into melancholy, while allowing viewers to feel truly immersed in this world.
Anna Starobinets
BOOK 1
The first book, THE WITCHES' MAGMA, takes place in the year 1669 after the Birth of the Great Gee (a new calendar - in our terms, it would already be the 38th century).
A pestilence rages on one of the Blessed Islands, and the inhabitants are convinced it is the work of witchcraft. They believe the contagion is spread through dreamsky dresses, garments dyed in a bright azure, a shade that doesn’t exist in this world of eternal twilight. The color of the sky, which people here see only in their dreams.
The case revolves around a young seamstress accused of causing this pestilence. Over the course of the investigation, Kay will make astonishing discoveries and fatal mistakes. He will lose his beloved steed, a giant megant. He will learn to extract potassium cyanide from dye. He will stumble upon the underground lair of the Hidden Folk and discover the seamstress’s twin sister there. He will fall in love for the first time, and betray for the first time. And in the finale, he will learn a terrible truth about himself that will shake his faith: he is in fact a miraculously surviving “soulless” twin, conceived of the devil’s seed.
As for the two sisters, one will be acquitted, while the other will be condemned to death. And in the New Middle Ages, that death looks much like the old one: burning at the stake. With one difference: here, the stakes are volcanoes.
