Ignore All Previous Instructions is a book about an autistic main character, Kelli, who has found a haven in following the rules. She follows her routine, she goes to work, and she supervises an AI that writes episodes for a show. That's the entirety of it, and it's enough.

Enter Rowan, her ex-boyfriend, who has spent the years since they last saw each other becoming a criminal (in the eyes of Kelli at least), and he's back to ask her for a favour. A favour that might turn her into a criminal as well.

I'd like to preface this by saying that sometimes sci-fi books don't work for me because I didn't grow up reading a lot, and therefore I struggle more to dive into that sort of worldbuilding (in comparison to fantasy books). From the start, though, I could tell that this book was different. First of all, we don't get many books with characters as unapologetically autistic as Kelli. I loved Kelli from the very first sentence, and I could tell we had a whole lot in common.

One of the strongest points of this book is its characters. They're diverse, they're complex, and they make mistakes. We get to meet Kelli and Rowan in two timelines: the now and the before, when they were just teenagers trying to figure out where they stand in the world. I loved this look into 'what would it be like to grow up autistic, lesbian, or trans in a world like that?'. The answers we get aren't all pretty, but they feel real.

I didn't a hundred percent connect with the worldbuilding, I think some of it just passed me by, but that wasn't an issue for me. I was happy to just be along for the ride. I don't think a reader needs to understand the worldbuilding completely to enjoy it and I'm sure plenty of reader love the worldbuilding more than I did.

I think for me, it's truly the autistic representation that sealed this book as one of my favourite sci-fi books. I am autistic myself and I've read a couple of books now with autistic representation. i've always been able to relate to parts of those characters, but I never related as much as I did to Kelli. If you told me the author took part of my soul and put it into Kelli then I'd believe you.

And I think that even touches a point made in the book. Media like shows and books, they need to be made with a soul. I enjoy a book when it touches my soul, and stories written by machines could never do that. Even at the very start of the book I could tell this book was a passion project for the author. I could tell Ada Hoffmann poured part of her soul into it and just for the few hours that I read the book, I was able to connect to her, which I loved. Even if Hoffmann's autism isn't exactly like Kelli's, she understood Kelli and me for that instance in ways I don't often experience.

So thank you to NetGalley for letting me read this e-arc, but more importantly thank you to Ada Hoffmann for writing this book and showing me that people like me exist outside of this universe and even in space!