2 stars, kinda disappointed with this one.

I love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I love the story, the characters, the factory. Everything is awesome. So I was obviously expecting great things of The Great Glass Elevator. And those expectations were not only not met, they were also disappointed.

There are two major issues that I have with this book:
1 - All of the characters that I liked in The Chocolate Factory are either incredibly annoying or super boring. Mr. Wonka and all the grandparents that are still in bed... I hate them. They are extremely frustrating and act sooooo stupid it is ridiculous. I disliked it every time they said or did something because of that.
2 - The story felt like it was originally written as two separate short stories but then later combined by letting the events take place on the same day. The two never really connected and that frustrated me.

Overall I liked the plot itself, it was interesting enough but both were short and not as magical and amazing as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I kinda wish I hadn't read this book because it has added a flavour to my experience with Charlie and the other characters that I don't like.

Aku berharap banyak anak-anak membaca karya Roald Dahl.

"Aku bisa melihat pabrik ini akan berada di tangan yang baik ketika aku mengundurkan diri. Kau belajar dengan sangat cepat. Aku senang sekali telah memilihmu, anakku sayang, senang sekali. Nah sekarang, apa keputusannya?" (hal. 185)

Selengkapnya: http://bibliough.blogspot.com/2015/07...

n  n    B.R.A.CE. 2019n  n Νο 89: Ένα βιβλίο με αντικείμενα στον τίτλο ή στο εξώφυλλο

Αυτό που απολαμβάνω είναι τα μηνύματα που περνάει μέσα από την ευφάνταστη ιστορία!

Can't believe its from the same guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Where were the hilarious characters? Wonka and Charlie and Grandpa Joe have been replaced by Wanka and half-headed nitwits, the rest of the Buckets lost their dignity as well and Dahl himself, I really don't know what he was thinking. Where was the wry and itelligent and sometimes black humour? This isn't even slapstick, it's a poor attempt of one. Where C&tCF spoke to a universal audience, C&tGE would not reach the same scope of readers.

Unfortunately I just didn't seem to click with this book especially considering how good Charlie and the chocolate factory was. Whereas the first book was filled with magic and was a lovely and easy read this one I struggled to enjoy reading to my son and he didn't seem as interested as he had been with book one. I just found it too far fetched and although I enjoyed the characters of willy wonka and Charlie the grandparents annoyed me as much as the brats in the first one due to their pure laziness. However it does not put me off Roald Dahl and thankfully it hasn't put my son off him either and we are moving straight onto another of his books, another I also have never read so will be new for both of us again =)

Ahhhhh! that age old problem of sequels, they are never as good as the original story, not even Roald Dahl is able to break that problem.

In the great glass elevator Dahl attempts to write a Sci-Fi story, I think it is the first time he has done that and for me his story telling doesn't work as well up in space. Down on Earth you can believe in giants and chocolate factories using slave labour and also a kid travelling on a flying giant peach, because all of that is just fantasy. But once you start bringing Sci-Fi into the story you have to make things a bit more believable and Dahl doesn't do that. This breaks the magic and you realise just how annoying his characters are and how silly the plot is....honestly, imagine America voting in a silly, immature President.

Still, Dahl has written so many amazing stories I'm sure he is allowed one hiccup.

Warning: Mild spoliers

Authors should know when to stop. This sequel should never have been written. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl had a terrific concept and a nice story - here he has neither. We read it only because the author has a nice way with words, and we love Willie Wonka and Charlie already.

If you have read the first book in the series (otherwise, what are you doing, reading this review?) you'd know that it ends with the whole Bucket family (two sets of grandparents, Mrs. and Mr. Bucket, and Charlie) and Willy Wonka shooting off to his factory in his glass lift (which can do many wondrous things). Well, it does not reach there. Due to the shenanigans of one grandparent, it shoots off into orbit. There it meets "Space Hotel U.S.A", the first ever hotel in outer space, officially launched by Good Ol' Murrica. And just when we thought we had a story, things start to unravel. The thread goes all over the place like a spilled bowl of spaghetti.

We meet the "Vermicious Knids", nasty monsters from outer space; A moronic U. S. President and his wacky cabinet; and Willy Wonka's wondrous chocolates which can increase and decrease people's age miraculously. We make a trip to Minusland where the people who regress too much into their youth go to. The story flows on haphazardly till it comes to a totally contrived end which hints at another book in the series (which was attempted, but thankfully, given up after the first chapter by Dahl.)

I wouldn't call the book a total loss, however. The dumb President Lancelot R. Gilligrass, the Vice President Miss Tibbs who is also his nanny and the real power in the White House, the sword-swallower from Afghanistan who is teaching the president to swallow his words, the Financial Adviser who has great trouble balancing the budget on his head, the trigger-happy army chief who likes to blow things up... this whole team was hilarious! (I know what you are thinking - but no, this was written in 1973.) And the names of the Russian President (Yougetoff) and the Chinese Premier and Assistant Premier (How-Yu-Bin and Chu-On-Dat, respectively) are worthy of Goscinny and Uderzo. I would have liked to learn more about these wonderful people, than the done-to-death chocolate factory.

The sequel to the charming story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this story picks up right where the last left off, in the glass elevator.

The characters are very much the same interesting people we met in the first book. Willy Wonka is bizarre with moments of very strange with Charlie who trusts him. They travel to orbit and have an adventure there. Then the story moves back to the chocolate factory where another story unfolds. It felt like two separate stories though both were interesting.

Though it doesn't have quite the same magic as the first book, it is enjoyable. It certainly shows the imagination of a brilliant writer.

A good middle grade story, this one is for those that fell in love with these characters in book one.

İlk kitabın büyüsü var mıydı?
Hayır, ama Dahl’ın anlatımıyla bu çikolatalı dünyaya tekrar dalmak hoştu.

I must say, although it almost pains me, that although this is still a good book, I didn't like it nearly as well as the others I've read before. Maybe that's the trouble with me and most sequels?

In this book, we return to Charlie Bucket and his family.

The book begins where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ended - in Charlie's house. The entire family (including the bed) is scooped up and put into the Great Glass Elevator. The plan is to get them all into the factory but, naturally, things don't go quite according to plan. Thus, the occupants of the elevator find themselves in orbit. There is a lot of ruccus about the President of the USA, some astronauts and a space hotel and then we also have ... aliens!
Yup, you read right.
Knids they are called and apparently they are quite nasty creatures.

I won't say any more (the story goes on after the alien problem) so as not to spoil the fun for others.

The writing was quite good, as usual, and we get the Oompa-Loompas again as well as some puns and jokes and the fantastically familiar illustrations by Quentin Blake but all in all it just didn't feel right to me.
Maybe it was the aliens or the entire concept of the story, but I didn't like it that much. I did like it obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have given it 3 stars, but it was a bit ... too spacy?! :(

4 stars! :D

So I thoroughly enjoyed this book! In my opinion it was a lot better than Charlie and the chocolate factory but that's probably because you se less of Willy Wonka in this one and he annoyed me quite a bit.

I really liked the story in this one and I found the US President to be absolutely hilarious :P

I stared and finished this book during a 24 hour readathon, Roald Dahls books are the perfect length for this kind of thing.

Can't wait to read more by him :D

I read this book today while waiting for Jonathan to get ready for dinner, always a lengthy procedure. Like virtually all Roald Dahl, it's very funny. It also contains a fine example of how easy it is for critics to jump to incorrect conclusions. One of the characters is the hapless President Gilligrass, who was still unable to read at the age of 23, and is completely under the thumb of his terrifying VP. There are many jokes about Gilligrass's blinding incompetence, culminating in one about an entertainment featuring a Sword-Swallower from Afghanistan. He has been hired to teach Gilligrass how to eat his words; the trick is first to take the initial S off SWORDS. Geddit?

So... obviously another reference to Dubya. Except that it can't be, since the novel was published in 1972, and the whole thing is just a coincidence. Bizarre.