Reader TTS

Novelist and _Time_ magazine book critic Lev Grossman was in a dark place. It was 2004, and it had been two years since the most recent Harry Potter book had come out. "It was a

difficult time for all of us," he remembers. "And I started playing with the story in that [waiting period] in almost a fan fiction-y way." The result would become _The

Magicians_, his_ New York Times_ best-selling fantasy series. _The Magicians_ has been described as "Harry Potter for adults," or as George R.R. Martin said, "_The Magicians_

is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea." In his interview with host Ophira Eisenberg on the _Ask Me Another_ stage, Grossman describes the decade he has

spent with his magical characters, and why he's ready to move on. His third and last installment of the series, recently published, is _The Magician's Land_. Grossman may be a

magic expert, but is he a pinball wizard? His _Ask Me Another_ Challenge takes us on a trip to the arcade. Get ready to relive your awkward teenage years as we play sounds from classic video

games. ------------------------- INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS ON WORKING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS INTO A FANTASY SERIES I thought a lot about what it would be like once you got out of a school for

magic. You would no longer have your avuncular adviser — there'd be no sort of Dumbledore or Gandalf. Nobody's gonna say, 'Here's this ring. Things are very bad. But

here's this ring, there's a volcano over there, take the ring, put it in the volcano, and everything's going to be fine.' There was nobody, there was nobody who would say

that ... no direction at all, and you just had to figure out what volcano to put your ring in, and no one would tell you and you never knew afterwards was it the right one. I felt very lost

and unadvised, and so it becomes much more a story about people trying to figure out not so much we're gonna use the magic and defeat evil; it becomes much more about trying to figure

out what is magic for. WHY OUR CULTURE IS OBSESSED WITH FANTASY Around the turn of the millennium ... the great pop culture Eye of Sauron turned and looked at magic and became interested. I

feel like it's really an expression of disillusionment. I think we went through a phase where we thought technology was the same thing as progress ... and over a long period of time it

just meant we got a lot of email from Nigeria and it wasn't enough for us. ... We started looking for answers elsewhere, and I think we turned to magic. Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more,

visit https://www.npr.org.