9781915368768 | Dead Ink Books | Paperback | £11.99 | Out Now!
A/S/L – internet shorthand for Age/Sex/Location – is an emotionally compelling, and narratively unique look at the lives of three trans friends: Lillith, Sash, and Abraxa. After meeting online, the trio vow to use CraftQ – a crude text-based programme found for free on the internet in 1998 – to build the greatest video game of all time, The Saga of the Sorceress. Like most teenage dreams, their plan never comes to fruition, and they go their separate ways, never meeting in person.
But that isn’t the end of their story.
The second part of A/S/L’s split narrative picks up with the trio in 2016, where we learn what has become of the video game pioneers in the intervening years. Lilith is the first trans woman to serve as an Assistant Loan Underwriter at Dollarwise Investments in Brooklyn. Sash is also in Brooklyn, working as a research assistant and part-time web-cam dominatrix. Neither knows the other lives nearby. And neither knows that Abraxa is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of her friend’s grandparent’s New Jersey home. None of them have forgotten The Sorceress, or her quest, still far from finished.
At its core, A/S/L is a story about the messiness of friendship. Thornton explores the relationships between the three perspective characters in a nuanced and impartial way. Allowing the reader to form their own conclusions on the events and relationships presented, by taking steps to ensure that no woman’s perspective is ever treated as the absolute truth. This offers a uniquely fluid POV structure, a choice Thornton admits was inspired by the videogame Final Fantasy VI (1994).
The influence of 90’s videogames runs deep in A/S/L, which features pixellated level maps to capture a nostalgic vibe. It also invokes a reverence to the early internet — a wild west of community building and liberation — by exploring completely-online friendships, and using chat log conversations to immerse you in digital space.
In interviews, Thornton has discussed videogames being the closest a person can come to feeling narrative consequence, where a player — via an avatar – actually feels the passage of time inside a digital world. A/S/L explores these ideas of reality and digital escapism in a complex, raw way, drawing parallels to the lives of it’s trans protagonists.
“For something that has so little to do with the body, it felt like writing about dancing, albeit dancing with an invented body. Sometimes this is what transness feels like too.” – Jeanne Thornton, for London Bookshop Review.
Trans identity is a key theme of the novel, but Thornton is clearly interested in exploring a diverse array of experiences. We follow Sash, Lillith, and Abraxa, from their teens into adulthood, living in an America gearing up for Trump’s first presidency. The trans experience is represented across different life stages, as well as across differing economic backgrounds — from sex work to white collar employment. Each woman is given their own distinct voice, through several clever writing choices, and Thornton has taken great pains to ensure each is the fully realised protagonist of their own story. Even through their mistakes, you will find yourself rooting for them.
A/S/L is a wholly unique reading experience, combining coding lexicon, pixelated maps, friendship drama, and complex trans representation into a bold, emotional package. It’s an ambitious and challenging novel that offers something completely new in today’s publishing landscape, and is a must read for videogame lovers looking for gut-wrenching characters.
