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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.