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A/S/L
A transformational, transformative story about videogames, three queer friends, and the code(s) they learn to survive, from the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Trans Fiction
It is 1998; Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, and they are making Saga of the Sorceress, a game that will change everything, if only for the three of them.
18 years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators. Lilith might be the first trans woman to ever work as an Assistant Loan Underwriter at Dollarwise Investments in Brooklyn. Sash is in Brooklyn as well, working as a research assistant and part-time webcam dominatrix. Neither knows that the other is there, or that Abraxa, the third member of Invocation LLC, is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of a friend’s grandparents� Jersey City home. They have never met in person, and have been out of touch for years, but none have forgotten the sorceress, or her quest, still far from finished.
This new book by Lambda Literary Fellow Jeanne Thornton, one of trans America’s brightest literary stars, queers our notion of nostalgia as it expertly blends literature with technology.
It is 1998; Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, and they are making Saga of the Sorceress, a game that will change everything, if only for the three of them.
18 years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators. Lilith might be the first trans woman to ever work as an Assistant Loan Underwriter at Dollarwise Investments in Brooklyn. Sash is in Brooklyn as well, working as a research assistant and part-time webcam dominatrix. Neither knows that the other is there, or that Abraxa, the third member of Invocation LLC, is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of a friend’s grandparents� Jersey City home. They have never met in person, and have been out of touch for years, but none have forgotten the sorceress, or her quest, still far from finished.
This new book by Lambda Literary Fellow Jeanne Thornton, one of trans America’s brightest literary stars, queers our notion of nostalgia as it expertly blends literature with technology.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2025
37 people are currently reading
3,757 people want to read
About the author
Jeanne Thornton
11Ìýbooks233ÌýfollowersJeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun (Soho 2021), The Black Emerald (Instar 2014), and The Dream of Doctor Bantam (OR 2012). She is the copublisher of Instar Books and the editor, with Tara Madison Avery, of the Ignatz Award-winning We're Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. Her fiction has appeared in n+1, WIRED, The Evergreen Review, and more. More information is at .
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 10, 2025
It’s 1998, and teenagers Sash, Lilith, and Abraxa are building what they’re sure is the greatest video game the world will ever see. They’ve never met in person, but they’re both best friends and coworkers on their shared creative project. That is, until Lilith goes silent and drops out of their group chats. Then Sash dissolves their “company� and puts the project on hold. The three go their separate ways, leaving their game unfinished.
Fast forward to 2016: Abraxa is a bohemian with no permanent address and some troubling mental health problems. Lilith is chasing a corporate career and dealing with the pressures of being the only trans woman at the bank she works for. And Sash is a bit of a loner, still living at home and eking out a living through intermittent sex work. But the three old friends are about to find one another again…and all of their lives will be turned upside down.
I really enjoyed this book! It’s told from all three women’s perspectives and interlaced with chat logs and game maps. I think this one will especially resonate with older millennials who were teens in the nineties—but as someone about half a generation younger than the characters, I still got a lot out of it. The ending was especially moving and had me on the verge of tears—and I am NOT someone who often cries because of books! All of the characters are complex and richly developed, and even when they made bad choices, their motivations made sense. I loved watching them interact and seeing the impressions they made on one another. I definitely recommend this one to lit fic fans and nostalgic gamers alike.
Thank you to Soho Press for the gifted ARC!
Fast forward to 2016: Abraxa is a bohemian with no permanent address and some troubling mental health problems. Lilith is chasing a corporate career and dealing with the pressures of being the only trans woman at the bank she works for. And Sash is a bit of a loner, still living at home and eking out a living through intermittent sex work. But the three old friends are about to find one another again…and all of their lives will be turned upside down.
I really enjoyed this book! It’s told from all three women’s perspectives and interlaced with chat logs and game maps. I think this one will especially resonate with older millennials who were teens in the nineties—but as someone about half a generation younger than the characters, I still got a lot out of it. The ending was especially moving and had me on the verge of tears—and I am NOT someone who often cries because of books! All of the characters are complex and richly developed, and even when they made bad choices, their motivations made sense. I loved watching them interact and seeing the impressions they made on one another. I definitely recommend this one to lit fic fans and nostalgic gamers alike.
Thank you to Soho Press for the gifted ARC!
Shelved as 'dnf'
January 26, 2025DNF @ 22%
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
The easy comparison here considering this is a story about following friends who make a video game together is of course tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. I’d say if you found that one “too technical� on the gaming side though, this executes that ten fold. You get chat logs, diagrams, and pretty detailed explanations on a game level from our mcs. I do think all of this together caused the story to become a bit bloated and unfortunately no matter how many times I tried to pick this back up it just wasn’t sticking for me. Granted the commitment to the lit/tech blend is what makes this unique and that’s tough to pull off in a general sense (where the mere mention of a video game gets people claiming a story is “too gamey� i.e TATAT), let alone as detailed as this is (at least to the point where I had dnf’d). I do like the overall idea behind this though, the rise of stories following how people are shaped and find identity online is one i find really interesting as it’s something I've experienced myself. + while this wasn’t for me, I can see people really loving this.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
The easy comparison here considering this is a story about following friends who make a video game together is of course tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. I’d say if you found that one “too technical� on the gaming side though, this executes that ten fold. You get chat logs, diagrams, and pretty detailed explanations on a game level from our mcs. I do think all of this together caused the story to become a bit bloated and unfortunately no matter how many times I tried to pick this back up it just wasn’t sticking for me. Granted the commitment to the lit/tech blend is what makes this unique and that’s tough to pull off in a general sense (where the mere mention of a video game gets people claiming a story is “too gamey� i.e TATAT), let alone as detailed as this is (at least to the point where I had dnf’d). I do like the overall idea behind this though, the rise of stories following how people are shaped and find identity online is one i find really interesting as it’s something I've experienced myself. + while this wasn’t for me, I can see people really loving this.
Read
March 28, 2025 I don’t consider identity a spoiler, so I’ll mention that all three main characters are queer trans women, though they didn’t know it as teens. As adults, they’ve lost touch and are living very different lives. Lilith has just gotten a promotion as a loan underwriter at a bank. Abraxa is pretty nomadic, bouncing from place to place. Sash lives with her parents and makes money as a webcam dominatrix.
Despite the time that’s passed, they all are haunted by their incomplete game, Saga of the Sorceress. Unbeknownst to them, they’re also now all living in or near New York City, and as Abraxa becomes unhealthily obsessed with the figure of the Sorceress and what she represents, their lives are poised to collide again.
A/S/L is an absorbing, thoughtful read—though I didn’t think it needed to be 500 pages. It’s melancholic, which made it drag by the end for me. I was especially worried about Abraxa, and I was hoping for more closure. Still, it’s an insightful, ambitious, memorable story that I can tell the right reader will be absolutely obsessed with.
Full review at .
Despite the time that’s passed, they all are haunted by their incomplete game, Saga of the Sorceress. Unbeknownst to them, they’re also now all living in or near New York City, and as Abraxa becomes unhealthily obsessed with the figure of the Sorceress and what she represents, their lives are poised to collide again.
A/S/L is an absorbing, thoughtful read—though I didn’t think it needed to be 500 pages. It’s melancholic, which made it drag by the end for me. I was especially worried about Abraxa, and I was hoping for more closure. Still, it’s an insightful, ambitious, memorable story that I can tell the right reader will be absolutely obsessed with.
Full review at .
April 13, 2025
Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley.
A story following three queer kids who once upon a time tried to make a video game together until one of them stopped coming online and the project was disbanded soon after. Now, 18 years later, we meet the characters as adults and get to see how they have changed: Lilith, trying to use scout mentality to find her footing in a cis world, Sash, who is a part-time webcam dominatrix and still lives with her parents, and Abraxa, mentally ill and homeless and slowly losing her connection to reality as she descends deeper into the world of the unfinished game.
While we only spend a little time with the characters as teenagers, I really found that part quite interesting. Even though I wasn’t familiar with online communities in the 1990s, I found it fun to explore how friendships and communities formed and fell apart. However, the bigger part of this novel takes place in 2016 in an America where Trump hasn’t yet been elected President (but will be during the course of the story) and follows our three main characters as they try to get through their days, diving deep into their various mental states. So if you don’t really connect with the first part of the story and the chatlogs and the very detailed descriptions of video game creation, don’t worry: that’s just the beginning of the story, it does change a lot and become a lot more accessible.
One thing I particularly enjoyed with this story is how it explored the concept of sanity and madness and the very thin line between them. Abraxa, who is treated as insane by everybody around her, holds a similar dream of building a safe haven as a corporate cis woman, who applies for a loan at a bank. One of Lilith’s trans friends votes for Trump, but then acts horrified when he attacks trans people. Sash longs for community with other people, but acts in ways that make others distrust her and finds herself more and more isolated. The line between over-the-top paranoia and the actual lived experience under transmisogyny and trauma born from it is thin and dissolving constantly and I found that incredibly intriguing to read.
While I agree with some reviews that at points the story felt too long (this book is 500 pages long and not that much happens) and the ending felt a bit too abrupt, I have to say I enjoyed that too. Life (and stories such as these, which are quite lifelike) do not need to tie up in a neat little bow to be enjoyable and as I let myself get carried away by Abraxa’s, Sash’s and Lilith’s experiences. I also really enjoyed getting to see the characters as closeted/gender-questioning teens and how the story then skipped over the whole coming out and transitioning processes to their adult and out selves only hinting at what happened in the time between. It reminded me a lot of Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante in that way.
If you like stories exploring video games or older internet culture, you will love the first part of the story. If you enjoy messy trans women and an exploration of (some of) the ways they carve out a survival in a fucked-up world, you’ll love the second part of the story. I really enjoyed it and am very glad I read it.
TW: domestic abuse (minor), drug use, fire, homophobia (minor), intrusive thoughts, psychosis, suicidal thoughts, transphobia, unreality
A story following three queer kids who once upon a time tried to make a video game together until one of them stopped coming online and the project was disbanded soon after. Now, 18 years later, we meet the characters as adults and get to see how they have changed: Lilith, trying to use scout mentality to find her footing in a cis world, Sash, who is a part-time webcam dominatrix and still lives with her parents, and Abraxa, mentally ill and homeless and slowly losing her connection to reality as she descends deeper into the world of the unfinished game.
While we only spend a little time with the characters as teenagers, I really found that part quite interesting. Even though I wasn’t familiar with online communities in the 1990s, I found it fun to explore how friendships and communities formed and fell apart. However, the bigger part of this novel takes place in 2016 in an America where Trump hasn’t yet been elected President (but will be during the course of the story) and follows our three main characters as they try to get through their days, diving deep into their various mental states. So if you don’t really connect with the first part of the story and the chatlogs and the very detailed descriptions of video game creation, don’t worry: that’s just the beginning of the story, it does change a lot and become a lot more accessible.
One thing I particularly enjoyed with this story is how it explored the concept of sanity and madness and the very thin line between them. Abraxa, who is treated as insane by everybody around her, holds a similar dream of building a safe haven as a corporate cis woman, who applies for a loan at a bank. One of Lilith’s trans friends votes for Trump, but then acts horrified when he attacks trans people. Sash longs for community with other people, but acts in ways that make others distrust her and finds herself more and more isolated. The line between over-the-top paranoia and the actual lived experience under transmisogyny and trauma born from it is thin and dissolving constantly and I found that incredibly intriguing to read.
While I agree with some reviews that at points the story felt too long (this book is 500 pages long and not that much happens) and the ending felt a bit too abrupt, I have to say I enjoyed that too. Life (and stories such as these, which are quite lifelike) do not need to tie up in a neat little bow to be enjoyable and as I let myself get carried away by Abraxa’s, Sash’s and Lilith’s experiences. I also really enjoyed getting to see the characters as closeted/gender-questioning teens and how the story then skipped over the whole coming out and transitioning processes to their adult and out selves only hinting at what happened in the time between. It reminded me a lot of Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante in that way.
If you like stories exploring video games or older internet culture, you will love the first part of the story. If you enjoy messy trans women and an exploration of (some of) the ways they carve out a survival in a fucked-up world, you’ll love the second part of the story. I really enjoyed it and am very glad I read it.
TW: domestic abuse (minor), drug use, fire, homophobia (minor), intrusive thoughts, psychosis, suicidal thoughts, transphobia, unreality
April 13, 2025
This is a tricky book to review. A/S/L (an internet initialism for “age, sex, location�) is a story about videogames and three friends, and the code(s) they learn to survive. Jeanne Thornton does an incredible job with the characterization of each of the three protagonists. I enjoyed the unusual formatting of the text in some chapters—it reminded me how much fun and randomness there was in using IRC in the late �90s and early 2000s.
This novel is heavy on character development, with no distinctive plot line—a risk when you have such niche characters. I found Abraxa, Sasha, and Lilith to be interesting, relatable characters. I enjoyed the first quarter of the book, with it dropping significantly until the final quarter. Perhaps A/S/L could have benefited from tighter editing—I felt it was about 80 to 100 pages longer than it needed to be. I appreciate the exploration of diverse, relevant themes for a young adult audience, such as addiction, sexuality, and identity.
Ultimately, A/S/L is a well-written novel with great trans representation, but it failed to resonate with me on a deeper level. This is not a book for everyone—it has many technicalities and bits of jargon that might not appeal to all.
Thank you, Jeanne Thornton and Dead Ink Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
This novel is heavy on character development, with no distinctive plot line—a risk when you have such niche characters. I found Abraxa, Sasha, and Lilith to be interesting, relatable characters. I enjoyed the first quarter of the book, with it dropping significantly until the final quarter. Perhaps A/S/L could have benefited from tighter editing—I felt it was about 80 to 100 pages longer than it needed to be. I appreciate the exploration of diverse, relevant themes for a young adult audience, such as addiction, sexuality, and identity.
Ultimately, A/S/L is a well-written novel with great trans representation, but it failed to resonate with me on a deeper level. This is not a book for everyone—it has many technicalities and bits of jargon that might not appeal to all.
Thank you, Jeanne Thornton and Dead Ink Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
April 1, 2025
A/S/L follows three trans women, first as teens in the 90s who meet online designing their own video game and then as adults in 2016 when their lives intersect again. Sasha, Lilith, and Abraxa first meet in chat rooms and team up to design their own video game based on their favorite world Saga of the Sorceress. The three teens (not publicly out as trans to each other) never meet, and their game is never completed. As adults in 2016, Lilith has a job at a bank, Sasha lives at home and works as an online dominatrix, and Abraxa squats in an abandoned church as she increasingly retreats into the world of the game she helped create as a teen. The three begin to circle each other once again, as Abraxa descends further into unreality.
I really liked how this explored the trans experience through the world of video games, with the worldbuiding, avatars, anonymity of online spaces, and the act of creation itself attractive to each girl. The adult timeline was a tougher read for me, as each character is dealing with disappointments and trauma, and because we spend so much time in Abraxa's mindset as fantasy and reality meld together.
I really liked how this explored the trans experience through the world of video games, with the worldbuiding, avatars, anonymity of online spaces, and the act of creation itself attractive to each girl. The adult timeline was a tougher read for me, as each character is dealing with disappointments and trauma, and because we spend so much time in Abraxa's mindset as fantasy and reality meld together.
April 14, 2025
thank you to NetGalley and Soho Press for granting me my wish for an advanced digital arc!
--
this book is a 4.5 star read rounded up to 5 stars.
kind of geeked that my first wish granted on netgalley was such an incredible success. this book takes place during two timelines - one set in the internet boom of irc chats and kids teaching themselves to code in the late 90's and then later, in 2016, in a world punctuated by political unrest.
our three characters are sash, abraxa, and lilith and wow, did this book accurately depict what a tool the internet used to be for kids to both work out their identities via playing with gender in chatrooms and doing web searches to find any amount of information that can help them understand the questions of their identity. similarly, it also shows some of the toxic nature of online culture, even back in the 90's, which is a precursor to the right wing radicalization of individuals in 2016.
but mostly, our three are trying to make a game. they've been inspired by a video game franchise, mystic knights. later, there's much discussion of the trans-coding of that media, how in the absence of representation trans kids had to read between the lines to feel seen in any capacity. and in their franchise, a sorceress plots to revive and revitalized the mythic northwood abbey, a safe haven of art and magic in a inhospitable world.
cut to 2016. these women are all trans, all living deeply different lives. sash is an online dominatrix, bartering cruelty for money. lilith's life is seemingly above board - she's scored a cushy bank job approving loan applications, but you soon realize it's due to the obsessive nature of her boss. and abraxa is lost, traumatized to the brink of a breakdown, drawn to a decomposing church where she thinks she might be able to recreate northwood abbey for real, because though trans people are more visible, the world is full of red hats and ever-evolving hatred against anything they've deemed against their ideologies. this story is about how these women reconnect in this new future.
there wee multiple layers to this story, from sussing out your identity in the world, internalized hatred, and the viciousness of transmisogyny, even from within the queer community. it's also about finding a space for us all where we can exist joyously. and it's about the things that we do to survive.
excellent, excellent read.
--
this book is a 4.5 star read rounded up to 5 stars.
kind of geeked that my first wish granted on netgalley was such an incredible success. this book takes place during two timelines - one set in the internet boom of irc chats and kids teaching themselves to code in the late 90's and then later, in 2016, in a world punctuated by political unrest.
our three characters are sash, abraxa, and lilith and wow, did this book accurately depict what a tool the internet used to be for kids to both work out their identities via playing with gender in chatrooms and doing web searches to find any amount of information that can help them understand the questions of their identity. similarly, it also shows some of the toxic nature of online culture, even back in the 90's, which is a precursor to the right wing radicalization of individuals in 2016.
but mostly, our three are trying to make a game. they've been inspired by a video game franchise, mystic knights. later, there's much discussion of the trans-coding of that media, how in the absence of representation trans kids had to read between the lines to feel seen in any capacity. and in their franchise, a sorceress plots to revive and revitalized the mythic northwood abbey, a safe haven of art and magic in a inhospitable world.
cut to 2016. these women are all trans, all living deeply different lives. sash is an online dominatrix, bartering cruelty for money. lilith's life is seemingly above board - she's scored a cushy bank job approving loan applications, but you soon realize it's due to the obsessive nature of her boss. and abraxa is lost, traumatized to the brink of a breakdown, drawn to a decomposing church where she thinks she might be able to recreate northwood abbey for real, because though trans people are more visible, the world is full of red hats and ever-evolving hatred against anything they've deemed against their ideologies. this story is about how these women reconnect in this new future.
there wee multiple layers to this story, from sussing out your identity in the world, internalized hatred, and the viciousness of transmisogyny, even from within the queer community. it's also about finding a space for us all where we can exist joyously. and it's about the things that we do to survive.
excellent, excellent read.
April 9, 2025
I know I rate a lot of 5 fives as most books I enjoy. However, I must talk about how profound this book is. It screams the 90s and the connectivity of the internet. It was a space for those who were/are different. A/S/L follows 3 trans women with different lives (from their pre-transition shelves to fully transition. FYI those are the two time periods you get (1990s and then 2016)). I would just mention since 2016, it does talk about the 1st election of you know who. Overall, I feel deeply touched by this novel. It deals with queer issues and the pursuit of art.
That being said, some of the weaknesses mentioned by other reviewers are true. It did feel that it went on a bit long at the end. Certain things leave on a thread.
That being said, some of the weaknesses mentioned by other reviewers are true. It did feel that it went on a bit long at the end. Certain things leave on a thread.
Read
March 3, 2025Will probably have more to say on this when it comes out. Need time to process but I was moved very deeply by this (and I’m not even a video game person at all!)
December 4, 2024
This doesn't come out till spring, but I'm recommending that you get your pre order in for this now. You'll get a story that features chat logs, using the internet to try on new identities for yourself and the people you meet and bond with when you're young and how they shape you, and a great look into using the framework of a fan video game you made with three others online when you were teenagers that shapes your life even decades on, and even haunts you to some degree, since it's unfinished. This was a hell of a read, and I loved every minute. Pick this up this spring when it comes out.
January 21, 2025
Jeanne is the best at writing teenagers and I think she is one of the greatest at writing sorcery, magic, invocation and dreams. If you've read Black Emerald or Summer Fun and had a good time, you will like this one. It's about three trans girls, all of whom participated in online game design communities in the 1990s and who are all psychically indebted to the character of the Sorceress from the popular Mystic Knights video game series.
The form of the triangle is a powerful one for magic--and for drama-- and the relationships between three trans girls closeted to various degrees, in various ways, serves as the wheel spinning in this plot. While having never met in person, the girls spend hours talking, and planning the levels of their game, in which a powerful sorceress will resurrect Norwood Abbey as a thriving center of art, magic, and community in a devastated wasteland. When romantic drama brews and one girl is sent to Boy Scout Camp, the game flounders, and the girls drift into adulthood separately.
Solemn Sash, once a bossy, serious teenager who cared about the game more than anyone, has become a dominatrix, but her lack of patience for bullshit or absence of vision means that the business side of her business challenges her, and she has limited contact with trans friends. Survival-mode Lilith, whose online moniker has become her real identity, works at a bank, turning down or approving loan applications as part of an irrepressible machine-part, while enduring come-ons from her boss. Abraxa, never dominated, and never in doubt about her identity, has rocketed meanwhile from one unstable life situation to the next, and after accompanying a straight couple on an abortive sailboat trip, she crashes with a friend in Jersey and then finds the abandoned, burned-out church that will become the subject of an intense psychosis which might also contain real magic.
Moved by dreams from childhood, but caught in unconsummated ripples that leave all three women unsatisfied, Sash and Lilith are vulnerable when Abraxa manages to make contact and reveals she has been squatting at the abandoned church, which she is trying to turn into a real Norwood Abbey. Just when it seems that dreams from another realm might really break through into our world though, there are failures of communication, of cooperation, which prevent the vision from emerging. Abraxa learns the truth about dynamics between Sash and Lilith that she thought she understood, and the spell breaks. i won't spoil too much.
This book has MORE than you have yet seen in most books about what it feels like to love someone you have never met, to need them, to be unable to explain threads from your past which are tied up in the magic spell another teenager cast on you through the computer. Like many novels, it doesn't have answers for revolution, but it encourages catharsis, contact, care, and empathy. Abraxa, in her multidimensional consciousness, is both a homeless woman experiencing insane visions and a visionary whose reality is not ready for this world, in a way that feels the most true to me of anything I have read about a crazy friend. The way her visions are the same as those of a businesslike cis woman who wants to start a community center, but different, is also highlighted. There is at the heart of the book a promise: if a few more things fell into place, it would be possible to build Norwood Abbey. Perhaps another playthrough would get to it. Jeanne writes sadness with the solidity of someone who believes in happiness. Lilith too, having experienced magic at the digital hands of Sash as a teenager and since at the hands of various good and bad trans girlfriends, tries to protect the possibility of better things coming, while living among many women who have accepted a certain degree of misery. Sash longs for more contact, but despite internal desire and decisiveness, she behaves in ways that others find erratic and untrustworthy-- the reactions of the world at large to our central women are an expert exploration of what transmisogyny actually looks like in queer spaces, while also lingering on the moments where our central characters fail themselves and each other. This sounds more pat than it actually is in the book. I was on the edge of my seat in so many interactions. No book has ever made a loan underwriter's actions so exciting.
The sorceress figurine falls off the shelf: your best friend named you and vanished. What would you do with the magic residue left behind? Where can you find safety in this dark world? And who will build the levels?
Read it.
The form of the triangle is a powerful one for magic--and for drama-- and the relationships between three trans girls closeted to various degrees, in various ways, serves as the wheel spinning in this plot. While having never met in person, the girls spend hours talking, and planning the levels of their game, in which a powerful sorceress will resurrect Norwood Abbey as a thriving center of art, magic, and community in a devastated wasteland. When romantic drama brews and one girl is sent to Boy Scout Camp, the game flounders, and the girls drift into adulthood separately.
Solemn Sash, once a bossy, serious teenager who cared about the game more than anyone, has become a dominatrix, but her lack of patience for bullshit or absence of vision means that the business side of her business challenges her, and she has limited contact with trans friends. Survival-mode Lilith, whose online moniker has become her real identity, works at a bank, turning down or approving loan applications as part of an irrepressible machine-part, while enduring come-ons from her boss. Abraxa, never dominated, and never in doubt about her identity, has rocketed meanwhile from one unstable life situation to the next, and after accompanying a straight couple on an abortive sailboat trip, she crashes with a friend in Jersey and then finds the abandoned, burned-out church that will become the subject of an intense psychosis which might also contain real magic.
Moved by dreams from childhood, but caught in unconsummated ripples that leave all three women unsatisfied, Sash and Lilith are vulnerable when Abraxa manages to make contact and reveals she has been squatting at the abandoned church, which she is trying to turn into a real Norwood Abbey. Just when it seems that dreams from another realm might really break through into our world though, there are failures of communication, of cooperation, which prevent the vision from emerging. Abraxa learns the truth about dynamics between Sash and Lilith that she thought she understood, and the spell breaks. i won't spoil too much.
This book has MORE than you have yet seen in most books about what it feels like to love someone you have never met, to need them, to be unable to explain threads from your past which are tied up in the magic spell another teenager cast on you through the computer. Like many novels, it doesn't have answers for revolution, but it encourages catharsis, contact, care, and empathy. Abraxa, in her multidimensional consciousness, is both a homeless woman experiencing insane visions and a visionary whose reality is not ready for this world, in a way that feels the most true to me of anything I have read about a crazy friend. The way her visions are the same as those of a businesslike cis woman who wants to start a community center, but different, is also highlighted. There is at the heart of the book a promise: if a few more things fell into place, it would be possible to build Norwood Abbey. Perhaps another playthrough would get to it. Jeanne writes sadness with the solidity of someone who believes in happiness. Lilith too, having experienced magic at the digital hands of Sash as a teenager and since at the hands of various good and bad trans girlfriends, tries to protect the possibility of better things coming, while living among many women who have accepted a certain degree of misery. Sash longs for more contact, but despite internal desire and decisiveness, she behaves in ways that others find erratic and untrustworthy-- the reactions of the world at large to our central women are an expert exploration of what transmisogyny actually looks like in queer spaces, while also lingering on the moments where our central characters fail themselves and each other. This sounds more pat than it actually is in the book. I was on the edge of my seat in so many interactions. No book has ever made a loan underwriter's actions so exciting.
The sorceress figurine falls off the shelf: your best friend named you and vanished. What would you do with the magic residue left behind? Where can you find safety in this dark world? And who will build the levels?
Read it.
February 24, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Soho Press for this ARC!
Rating: 3.5 Stars rounded up.
In A/S/L we follow the story of three trans women, starting with them as teeangers still trying to figure themselves out in the 90s, as they work on a video game together, and ending with them as women in their 30s in 2016.
As someone who was born in 2001 I can’t say that I know particularly much about what the internet was like back then, but I’ve always been fascinated by the culture that was created by the numerous niche websites, blogs and forums you could find back then, now of course largely replaced by well-known social media sites, so I really enjoyed that element of this book. I found the chatroom conversations a bit hard to follow at times, especially since I was very much unfamiliar with that style of messaging one another, but I’m sure if you are older than me and grew up with that sort of thing you will have a grand nostalgic time.
In the same vein I unfortunately also didn’t understand absolutely anything related to the game they were creating, which had me struggling quite a lot in the earlier parts of the book, as I hadn’t expected for there to be quite as much lingo, so to speak, as there was. However this eased up significantly later in the book, so even if you are like me and have no clue about anything video game related, and even less so video game culture in the 90s, you can still have a good time if you stick it out.
I think Thornton did an absolutely fantastic job of giving all the characters whose POV we got to read from a distinctive voice, you could show me a paragraph without any identifying information and just from the character’s style of speaking/thinking I could immediately identify who it is. And not only did all the characters each have a distinctive voice from each other, I also generally found the way they thought to be very unique.
To me the way mental illness and neurodivergence were represented in the characters was well done in a way that was uncomfortable and painful because of how relatable it was. This was actually one of the elements of the book I struggled the most with, as I could often see myself in the characters and their thought patterns and actions, which is a bit of a disconcerting experience when you have internalised biases towards said issues. However, this is also one of the reasons I would say that this is an important book, because it shows these issues without really pathologising or naming them, confronting the reader with them in a way that causes discomfort that I would describe as necessary for one to reflect on one’s own biases and perceptions.
Of course I also liked the way the trans experience was shown here. I feel that often trans characters are kind of “forced� to be at least somewhat put together and “respectable� to a wider audience, but for a group that is so often the victim of violence and exclusion from opportunities it is only natural to often be forced onto the messier side of life. I really liked the way that the effect each character’s transness has on their lives, on the jobs they have, the friends they keep, the romantic and intimate relationships they attempt is represented here. I think this could be quite comforting to read for other trans (and cis!) people who have found themselves forced to the outskirts of society.
Overall I would say that while I can’t recommend this book to everyone, there certainly is an audience for this. If you like video games and older internet culture, messy trans women and the ways the world beats one down, then this is the book for you.
Rating: 3.5 Stars rounded up.
In A/S/L we follow the story of three trans women, starting with them as teeangers still trying to figure themselves out in the 90s, as they work on a video game together, and ending with them as women in their 30s in 2016.
As someone who was born in 2001 I can’t say that I know particularly much about what the internet was like back then, but I’ve always been fascinated by the culture that was created by the numerous niche websites, blogs and forums you could find back then, now of course largely replaced by well-known social media sites, so I really enjoyed that element of this book. I found the chatroom conversations a bit hard to follow at times, especially since I was very much unfamiliar with that style of messaging one another, but I’m sure if you are older than me and grew up with that sort of thing you will have a grand nostalgic time.
In the same vein I unfortunately also didn’t understand absolutely anything related to the game they were creating, which had me struggling quite a lot in the earlier parts of the book, as I hadn’t expected for there to be quite as much lingo, so to speak, as there was. However this eased up significantly later in the book, so even if you are like me and have no clue about anything video game related, and even less so video game culture in the 90s, you can still have a good time if you stick it out.
I think Thornton did an absolutely fantastic job of giving all the characters whose POV we got to read from a distinctive voice, you could show me a paragraph without any identifying information and just from the character’s style of speaking/thinking I could immediately identify who it is. And not only did all the characters each have a distinctive voice from each other, I also generally found the way they thought to be very unique.
To me the way mental illness and neurodivergence were represented in the characters was well done in a way that was uncomfortable and painful because of how relatable it was. This was actually one of the elements of the book I struggled the most with, as I could often see myself in the characters and their thought patterns and actions, which is a bit of a disconcerting experience when you have internalised biases towards said issues. However, this is also one of the reasons I would say that this is an important book, because it shows these issues without really pathologising or naming them, confronting the reader with them in a way that causes discomfort that I would describe as necessary for one to reflect on one’s own biases and perceptions.
Of course I also liked the way the trans experience was shown here. I feel that often trans characters are kind of “forced� to be at least somewhat put together and “respectable� to a wider audience, but for a group that is so often the victim of violence and exclusion from opportunities it is only natural to often be forced onto the messier side of life. I really liked the way that the effect each character’s transness has on their lives, on the jobs they have, the friends they keep, the romantic and intimate relationships they attempt is represented here. I think this could be quite comforting to read for other trans (and cis!) people who have found themselves forced to the outskirts of society.
Overall I would say that while I can’t recommend this book to everyone, there certainly is an audience for this. If you like video games and older internet culture, messy trans women and the ways the world beats one down, then this is the book for you.
February 17, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be published in the US by Soho Press on April 1, 2025.
Full Rating: 4.25 stars rounded up
Jeanne Thornton’s A/S/L is a deeply evocative novel that pulses with the ache of queer longing, the glitchy hum of '90s internet culture, and the fractured beauty of trans survival. Spanning both 1998 and 2016, the book traces the lives of Abraxa, Sash, and Lilith—once gender-questioning teens crafting a video game called Saga of the Sorceress in an online chatroom, now estranged trans women navigating the messy terrain of adulthood.
Thornton’s prose captures the jagged edges of trans becoming: at times dreamy and poetic, other times raw and disjointed, reflecting the precarity of forging an identity under systems designed to erase you. The book hums with the tension between fantasy and reality—between the worlds we build to survive and the ones that threaten to break us. The teens� game-building is rendered with reverence, positioning video games as queer art forms—portals into self-determination, into worlds where bodies and identities are mutable, magic. This creative defiance carries into adulthood, where the characters remain tethered to their shared past, still reaching for that elusive sense of home.
Abraxa is a tempest of restless movement and fierce imagination, clinging to the belief that Saga of the Sorceress was something more than a game—that it was, and still is, real. Lilith, burdened by the Boy Scout creeds of loyalty and self-discipline, seeks safety in cisnormative approval yet yearns for something wilder. Sash, craving connection, funnels her emotions into storytelling and financial domination, grasping for intimacy in commodified spaces. Each woman aches to be seen—not as a symbol or spectacle, but as a person worthy of love, creation, and survival.
If the novel stumbles, it’s in its pacing; certain chapters drag, and the structure occasionally feels unwieldy. But the emotional core remains potent. Thornton refuses tidy resolutions—because trans lives are not tidy. Instead, she offers something more radical: the possibility of rebuilding, together.
📖 Recommended For: Lovers of introspective trans fiction, stories exploring online communities and digital subcultures, and readers drawn to narratives about queer friendship and creative world-building; anyone nostalgic for late '90s internet culture or interested in the intersections of gender, technology, and art; and fans of Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas.
🔑 Key Themes: Trans Identity and Becoming, Queer Community and Longing, Creativity as Survival, Digital Worlds and Self-Determination, Power and Vulnerability in Relationships.
Content / Trigger Warnings: Transphobia (severe), Homophobia (moderate), Suicidal Thoughts (minor), Domestic Abuse (minor), Physical Abuse (minor), Toxic Relationship (minor), Sexual Content (severe), Fire (minor), Abandonment (minor), Drug Use (severe).
Full Rating: 4.25 stars rounded up
Jeanne Thornton’s A/S/L is a deeply evocative novel that pulses with the ache of queer longing, the glitchy hum of '90s internet culture, and the fractured beauty of trans survival. Spanning both 1998 and 2016, the book traces the lives of Abraxa, Sash, and Lilith—once gender-questioning teens crafting a video game called Saga of the Sorceress in an online chatroom, now estranged trans women navigating the messy terrain of adulthood.
Thornton’s prose captures the jagged edges of trans becoming: at times dreamy and poetic, other times raw and disjointed, reflecting the precarity of forging an identity under systems designed to erase you. The book hums with the tension between fantasy and reality—between the worlds we build to survive and the ones that threaten to break us. The teens� game-building is rendered with reverence, positioning video games as queer art forms—portals into self-determination, into worlds where bodies and identities are mutable, magic. This creative defiance carries into adulthood, where the characters remain tethered to their shared past, still reaching for that elusive sense of home.
Abraxa is a tempest of restless movement and fierce imagination, clinging to the belief that Saga of the Sorceress was something more than a game—that it was, and still is, real. Lilith, burdened by the Boy Scout creeds of loyalty and self-discipline, seeks safety in cisnormative approval yet yearns for something wilder. Sash, craving connection, funnels her emotions into storytelling and financial domination, grasping for intimacy in commodified spaces. Each woman aches to be seen—not as a symbol or spectacle, but as a person worthy of love, creation, and survival.
If the novel stumbles, it’s in its pacing; certain chapters drag, and the structure occasionally feels unwieldy. But the emotional core remains potent. Thornton refuses tidy resolutions—because trans lives are not tidy. Instead, she offers something more radical: the possibility of rebuilding, together.
📖 Recommended For: Lovers of introspective trans fiction, stories exploring online communities and digital subcultures, and readers drawn to narratives about queer friendship and creative world-building; anyone nostalgic for late '90s internet culture or interested in the intersections of gender, technology, and art; and fans of Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas.
🔑 Key Themes: Trans Identity and Becoming, Queer Community and Longing, Creativity as Survival, Digital Worlds and Self-Determination, Power and Vulnerability in Relationships.
Content / Trigger Warnings: Transphobia (severe), Homophobia (moderate), Suicidal Thoughts (minor), Domestic Abuse (minor), Physical Abuse (minor), Toxic Relationship (minor), Sexual Content (severe), Fire (minor), Abandonment (minor), Drug Use (severe).
April 9, 2025
In A/SL we initially follow three teenagers in 1998, Sash, Lilith and Abraxa, who are creating a game that they hope will change the world. They're online friends but have never met in person, and suddenly, Lilith disappears from their group chats and the game they had so much hope for is all but forgotten about.
Fast forward 18 years, it's now 2016 and the three queer trans women have lost touch and have no idea how close they all live to eachother, and are still haunted by "what if'" and by what
their game could have been. Lilith works for an investment company, Abraxa has no permanent address and lives quite a nomadic life, and Sash does some sex work. But the friends are soon to meet up again and their lives with once again collide.
Want to know more? Be sure to pick your copy up from the wonderful Dead Ink Books here in my home city of Liverpool, or of course, online.
So all in all, this was an interesting read for me. Not necessarily one I'd usually pick up, but I'm glad I did as I certainly did enjoy it.
I'm was about the same age as our three main characters in the 90's, so I found some great nostalgia in the read.
It's thoughtful and thought-provoking, with a pace that bobs along nicely ( it's not fast paced, but it's not supposed to be, not every story needs to be full of action ) and it has quite a sombre feel to it, but for me, that's not a negative and felt right.
The story is told from the perspective of all three women, and intertwined in the story are chat logs, diagrams and other technical game details, which I found interesting.
It's a tender read, full of warmth and hope, but it's also sad in parts and may even have you tear up.
The characters have depth and complexities, are believable and feel real
Overall, I'm glad i read a genre I wouldn't normally.
5 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.
Fast forward 18 years, it's now 2016 and the three queer trans women have lost touch and have no idea how close they all live to eachother, and are still haunted by "what if'" and by what
their game could have been. Lilith works for an investment company, Abraxa has no permanent address and lives quite a nomadic life, and Sash does some sex work. But the friends are soon to meet up again and their lives with once again collide.
Want to know more? Be sure to pick your copy up from the wonderful Dead Ink Books here in my home city of Liverpool, or of course, online.
So all in all, this was an interesting read for me. Not necessarily one I'd usually pick up, but I'm glad I did as I certainly did enjoy it.
I'm was about the same age as our three main characters in the 90's, so I found some great nostalgia in the read.
It's thoughtful and thought-provoking, with a pace that bobs along nicely ( it's not fast paced, but it's not supposed to be, not every story needs to be full of action ) and it has quite a sombre feel to it, but for me, that's not a negative and felt right.
The story is told from the perspective of all three women, and intertwined in the story are chat logs, diagrams and other technical game details, which I found interesting.
It's a tender read, full of warmth and hope, but it's also sad in parts and may even have you tear up.
The characters have depth and complexities, are believable and feel real
Overall, I'm glad i read a genre I wouldn't normally.
5 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.
April 12, 2025
Summer Fun is one of my favourite books so I have been very much anticipating A/S/L!
Abraxa, Lilith and Sash are teenagers who meet in a chatroom and decide to create a video game together. Well, they start but never finish. Years later all 3 are trans, in their 30s and living in or close to New York but have never met. Since the disbanding of their video game company they’ve all thought about their pasts to varying degrees and then they gradually start to drift together again.
I really enjoyed this. For me it did get a little bogged down in the coding details sometimes, it’s just not an area I have interest in so I would’ve been happier to read more about character. In a perfect world I would have loved a little more resolution but I guess that wasn’t the point really.
I think, more than anything, what made the experience so enjoyable was the writing. Thornton writes with such tenderness and care that it is a treat to be amongst her words. And that is why I will always be reading!
*read via Edelweiss
Abraxa, Lilith and Sash are teenagers who meet in a chatroom and decide to create a video game together. Well, they start but never finish. Years later all 3 are trans, in their 30s and living in or close to New York but have never met. Since the disbanding of their video game company they’ve all thought about their pasts to varying degrees and then they gradually start to drift together again.
I really enjoyed this. For me it did get a little bogged down in the coding details sometimes, it’s just not an area I have interest in so I would’ve been happier to read more about character. In a perfect world I would have loved a little more resolution but I guess that wasn’t the point really.
I think, more than anything, what made the experience so enjoyable was the writing. Thornton writes with such tenderness and care that it is a treat to be amongst her words. And that is why I will always be reading!
*read via Edelweiss
April 9, 2025
i DNF this book, but felt like i needed to write a review due to the fact that i could have avoided this problem by being aware at all that this is not a very accessible book for the average reader. the story is told with and amongst a lot of tech and game design speak (as well as things like chat logs) and honestly unless you are already specifically a part of this tech/game design community, this could be very much unreadable for you like it was for me. the blurb for this book (at the time of writing, as i received an e-ARC) does not make it clear.
i know from other reviews that this type of writing lessens at the book goes on, but i couldn’t understand enough of it due to the story set-up being drowned in jargon to be able to wait it out and i am pretty bummed because i’m fairly certain i am missing out on a great story.
i know from other reviews that this type of writing lessens at the book goes on, but i couldn’t understand enough of it due to the story set-up being drowned in jargon to be able to wait it out and i am pretty bummed because i’m fairly certain i am missing out on a great story.
April 11, 2025
weird and wonderful, chaotic and brutal, everything that trans fiction should be. messy - but with so much heart. all of the characters so chaotic and even when they made shitty choices, their motivations made sense to me - because JT had made them soooo developed. idk maybe im a little pissed at the end. but someone should probs tell me why i shouldn't be haha! maybe im just v optimistic ???
4.5/5
4.5/5
March 18, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Soho Press for this ARC.
I loved the integration of games to the daily lives of our main characters and following their journey as teen online friends who are trying to code their own game, and in their adulthood.
The only thing was that the book was a 100 pages too long, but otherwise beautifully written!
I loved the integration of games to the daily lives of our main characters and following their journey as teen online friends who are trying to code their own game, and in their adulthood.
The only thing was that the book was a 100 pages too long, but otherwise beautifully written!
April 11, 2025
Six months in teen time can warp the fabric of your life forever. Jeanne's latest follows three trans women who briefly worked on a video game together as teenagers, the ways they failed each other and themselves, and what happens when their lives collide decades later. Jeanne's work is so perfect and idiosyncratic, you will never find another book like this.
April 14, 2025
“I don't think we get free by settling all our debts to one another. I'm not a debt to settle; neither are you. We get free by something else: by recognizing that what we do to one another is forever. We are what we are to one another. I am what you did to me-—you are what I did to you. Despite everything, I like who I am. I hope you do, too.�
February 21, 2024
I can't say enough about this book, but seeing as it hasn't been released yet I will hold my tongue for now. Thanks to Jeanne for giving me a peek at this in drafts, I'm blown away more with every new book!
January 9, 2024
I was privileged enough to read this book in drafts and I cannot remember the last time I was affected by a trans novel so deeply. You need to read this.
October 31, 2024
gorgeously affected and filled with emotion for these three interesting people. 5 stars, would recommend, tysm for the arc.
February 5, 2025
Loved it cover to cover! More to come on this one�
February 10, 2025
It's not even halfway through February but I already know this will be a favorite read of 2025. So, so beautiful, both heartbreaking and heart-healing.
April 11, 2025
This book is awesome.
April 12, 2025
Gets into the thorny realities of childhood friendships and online identities. Really beautiful story that ends in a surprising yet inevitable way!
March 18, 2025
‘The best thing about video games is how they erase you, except for your willpower. You can do anything in a video game that the code lets you do, even many things the code doesn’t let you do�
A/S/L follows three trans girls who designed games online as teenagers in the 90s. 18 years later they find themselves in a similar vicinity having never met in real life.
Games themselves are a central theme as is trans womanhood, video games are a way to become someone else, detached from your body, with clear rules to follow for success. As adults, they still see their lives through this lens, having to perform work and social interactions successfully in order to be able to survive.
I enjoyed the exploration of trans girlhood, trans lesbianism, and trans survival. Mental health issues are front and centre with elements of OCD, Autism, and Psychosis coming into play. I love books that explore our responsibility to ourselves and each other, and the impact the people we know as adolescents have through the rest of our lives. I think overall there’s a lot to like and I know a lot of people will really value seeing characters like the ones in this book.
I did feel like this book took longer to read than it should have. The narrative gets lost at times in all the interiority, I could have done with fewer descriptions of dreams, meandering mental spirals, and a faster pace overall. This might have benefitted from being pared down somewhat, though I will say this is an early copy!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.
A/S/L follows three trans girls who designed games online as teenagers in the 90s. 18 years later they find themselves in a similar vicinity having never met in real life.
Games themselves are a central theme as is trans womanhood, video games are a way to become someone else, detached from your body, with clear rules to follow for success. As adults, they still see their lives through this lens, having to perform work and social interactions successfully in order to be able to survive.
I enjoyed the exploration of trans girlhood, trans lesbianism, and trans survival. Mental health issues are front and centre with elements of OCD, Autism, and Psychosis coming into play. I love books that explore our responsibility to ourselves and each other, and the impact the people we know as adolescents have through the rest of our lives. I think overall there’s a lot to like and I know a lot of people will really value seeing characters like the ones in this book.
I did feel like this book took longer to read than it should have. The narrative gets lost at times in all the interiority, I could have done with fewer descriptions of dreams, meandering mental spirals, and a faster pace overall. This might have benefitted from being pared down somewhat, though I will say this is an early copy!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.
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