Welcome to the Year of the Sword. We open on January 1, New Years Day, to Grant Leap having a dream about his majestic success. Then, as we all do, he wakes up. He’s a Leap, someone born on February 29, who are literally the lowest of the low in society. From the literal bottom, he embarks on a journey to heal the world.
Honestly, I’m still trying to work out how I feel about this book. I’ve been looking forward to it since mid 2020, before the pandemic was even a twinkle in our eyes. At the time it was a hush hush secret project for Dakota to release 12 books in a single series in a single year. If you want to know “did I enjoy the book?” the answer is a resounding yes. But that’s not how I feel about it. As is common for Mountain Dale Press, Dakota created characters with depth and personality. But more than that, he created a broken society. This really tugs at me because how do you go against a society where the value system is broken.
For clarity, I don’t mean broken in a “It functions mostly correct except for this one way”, no I mean “Society is built around a core dysfunction and Dakota explores what a truly and fully broken society around this would look like.” I don’t have a good way to explain without completely destroying the book, so I’m going to leave reading the book as an exercise to my readers.
Instead, I’m going to talk about how incredible it is to create a story where the core of it is ostracizing the lowest of the low so much that they find healthier values than their society possesses. Throughout the story, we see Grant running headfirst into the core dysfunctions, and even succumbing to them, but ultimately rejecting them. That’s what is probably the most stand out thing: We have a hero who actively works against social norms.
I almost feel like Dakota was reading the book of James when he conceived this story:
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Something about how it’s written just feels like it was built around this. Of course, I’m probably not right about that… but even so, it reminded me of it. It was a ride of trials and tests, with each one breaking down the notions Grant had held for years and