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A transformational, transformative story about video games, three queer friends, and the code(s) they learn to survive, from the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Trans Fiction.
1998: Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, scattered across the country but joined by the Internet. They are making Saga of the Sorceress, a video game that will change everything, if only for the three of them.
Eighteen years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators. Lilith works as a loan underwriter at a rinky-dink bank in Manhattan, a trans woman in a very cis world. Sash is in Brooklyn, working as a part-time webcam dominatrix. Neither knows that the other is in New York, or that Abraxa is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of a friend's Jersey City home after a disaster at sea. They have never met in person, and have been out of touch for years, but none have forgotten the sorceress, or her unfinished quest.
This new book by Jeanne Thornton, one of trans America's brightest literary stars, queers our notion of nostalgia as it expertly blends literature with technology.
"A dazzlingly creative and heartfelt novel...Thornton has a skillful command of worldbuilding, both in the physical world and within chat rooms and 2D video games. She writes with profound, incisive authority about relationships." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Ambitious and playful...As Thornton chronicles the characters' sex lives, relationships, and gender transitions, she explores their deep-seated longings and regrets...The determinedly upbeat tone carries the reader along, as do the novel's dynamic stylistic elements, such as old-school online chat threads and low-bit illustrations of the game." —Publishers Weekly
"Intricate...[A/S/L] traces the lives, problems, woes, and tribulations of the game makers. Thornton has created a one-of-a-kind book, with a great idea propelling it...The story increases in power and interest as it develops." —Library Journal
"If we see the Great American Novel less as a singular achievement than as a genre—lengthy and humanistic, concerned with individual destinies as a means to addressing What It Means To Be An American Now—then it is no exaggeration to say Jeanne Thornton is the greatest living Great American Novelist." —Cat Fitzpatrick, author of The Call-Out
"For those of us in that generation that first grew up behind computer screens in the intimacy of strangers, the book is a vital touchstone. Characteristic of Thornton's work, A/S/L doesn't cheat, nor dumb down the complicated circumstances of its characters and their obsessions; she makes legible even the most esoteric of obscura. The novel is unapologetically authentic and unflinchingly honest." —Bill Cheng, author of Southern Cross the Dog
This information about A/S/L was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, as well as The Black Emerald and The Dream of Doctor Bantam. Her fiction has appeared in n+1, WIRED, Evergreen Review, and other places. She is an editor at Feminist Press, as well as copublisher of Instar Books and coeditor of the Ignatz Award-winning We're Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. She lives in Brooklyn, and more information is available at jeannethornton.com.
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