I loved this - a beautifully written, funny, deeply aching account of the way our friendships shape and ruin us. I loved the granular, emotive detail spent on the textures of CraftQ (a fictional analogue for ZZT, which I knew nothing about before reading this but then was interested enough in to read Anna Anthropy's excellent ZZT (Boos Fight Books) directly after), IRC queries, the glow of a family PC in a rec room late at night in the 1990s. I loved the surfeit of beautiful dream-images and period (both 1998 and 2016) detail. I loved how many ideas were in it about friendship and gender and art. If I were being extremely lazy I'd be tempted to comp it to I Saw The TV Glow meets Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow (a book I loathed and longed to see done properly...), but this also reminded me in parts of B R Yeager's Negative Space and John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van. I really enjoyed Thornton's debut, Summer Fun, and am delighted by her commitment to very convincing fictional cultural objects, but I loved this book more. Will be recommending to lots of people - thanks for letting me read it!

Thanks to Dead Ink books and NetGalley for an eARC of A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton but sadly, I do not feel I am in the intended audience for this book and so I DNF'd at 40%.

This book, that spans the lives of 3 separate people between their teen years developing a video game together, to their adult lives where they all live in New York City, is so very character-driven, it sometimes doesn't feel like there is much of a plot. And this isn't a bad thing! I know many people who love an emotional narration that relies in how the characters are processing their lives but I struggle with it most times.

The beginning of this book was really interesting and I know many people, from my own teenage years in the 90's, that would LOVE the intense focus on the coding of Saga of the Sorceress and how Sasha, Lillith and Abraxas set-up their gaming company. I felt intense nostalgia during the chapter that was told entirely through a chatroom conversation among online friends. I chatted to my own friends that way!

But the rest of the story that focuses on their adult lives left my wanting. There is a very specific audience for this book, and I think when the right person finds this, they will truly feel seen and represented.

The concept is fantastic, and so are the title, the cover, and the queer rep, but unfortunately I found the writing too dense to connect with the story or the characters, so I had to DNF a quarter of the way through.