A/S/L

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 as they create 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.

Weaving together the technologies of two decades, and a healthy dose of magic, A/S/L is a novel that queers our notions of nostalgia, friendship, and even the possibilities of fiction itself, confirming Jeanne Thornton as one of our best and most ambitious novelists.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"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

"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

"Beyond astonishing, imbued with witchery, lust, the isolation and connection of a game, devastating heartbreak, and the ageless, aching wrap of friendship and time. I can't remember the last time a trans novel affected me this deeply. I can't remember the last time any novel affected me this deeply. Jeanne Thornton is like a literary sorceress becoming more and more powerful with every new volume." - Casey Plett