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A review by lejoy
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
2.0
Oddly, this is the Dahl book that I remember most vividly from childhood. Some of those memories are strongly negative, such as the scene in which the Knids eat a bunch of people and their screams are heard over the radio, so I don't think I necessarily liked the book, but it certainly stayed with me and I feel like I must have read it a few times, or at least dipped into it.
I don't have much positive to say for it as an adult. 2 stars is a bit of a harsh rating, but I can't possibly give it 3, because some almost decent books have been 3 stars, and this is not one of them. Dammit Goodreads, introduce half stars.
This is the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I swear that Dahl made the plot up as he went along. So the Bucket family are in the glass lift on their way back to the factory, they accidentally go too high and end up in space, where a bunch of aliens attack. Then they go back to the factory and there is a whole roundabout sequence in which the grandparents get de-aged and then re-aged, making it all pretty pointless.
Charlie's family have no personalities. In fact, Charlie himself doesn't have a personality. Willy Wonka has a personality, Charlie and Grandpa Joe stand near him, Mr and Mrs Bucket do literally nothing at all, and the other three grandparents are annoying jerks. Clearly Dahl had nothing for these characters to do but was stuck with them because that was how the first book ended.
Some of what happens is really nasty and as usual Dahl's characters seem completely callous (not to mention Dahl's narration as well). Our 'heroes' run away from killer aliens, without warning the shuttle of humans behind them, they fly all the way around the Earth and when they get back to the shuttle, only then does Charlie suggest that they should help them. AFTER twenty people have been murdered. Meanwhile Wonka deploys his usual 'teach them a lesson' stance on Charlie's grandparents instead of helping them, which doesn't seem the right way to treat the family of someone he cares about.
There are so many songs and poems. Oh God. Make them stop.
The first half of the book (the science fiction section - the latter half being the fantasy section) is cut with these tediously not funny scenes of the President of the USA, which literally reads like a list of dad jokes.
So, so clear that Dahl just didn't have anything for the main characters to do (as well as the meandering non-plot). Also one scene is very clearly ripped off from Conan Doyle's The Horror Of The Heights (while one of the poems is suspiciously Lewis Carroll-like). I guess these may be homages, but still. There was not enough original, sensible and interesting plot to have written a sequel at all.
I don't have much positive to say for it as an adult. 2 stars is a bit of a harsh rating, but I can't possibly give it 3, because some almost decent books have been 3 stars, and this is not one of them. Dammit Goodreads, introduce half stars.
This is the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I swear that Dahl made the plot up as he went along. So the Bucket family are in the glass lift on their way back to the factory, they accidentally go too high and end up in space, where a bunch of aliens attack. Then they go back to the factory and there is a whole roundabout sequence in which the grandparents get de-aged and then re-aged, making it all pretty pointless.
Charlie's family have no personalities. In fact, Charlie himself doesn't have a personality. Willy Wonka has a personality, Charlie and Grandpa Joe stand near him, Mr and Mrs Bucket do literally nothing at all, and the other three grandparents are annoying jerks. Clearly Dahl had nothing for these characters to do but was stuck with them because that was how the first book ended.
Some of what happens is really nasty and as usual Dahl's characters seem completely callous (not to mention Dahl's narration as well). Our 'heroes' run away from killer aliens, without warning the shuttle of humans behind them, they fly all the way around the Earth and when they get back to the shuttle, only then does Charlie suggest that they should help them. AFTER twenty people have been murdered. Meanwhile Wonka deploys his usual 'teach them a lesson' stance on Charlie's grandparents instead of helping them, which doesn't seem the right way to treat the family of someone he cares about.
There are so many songs and poems. Oh God. Make them stop.
The first half of the book (the science fiction section - the latter half being the fantasy section) is cut with these tediously not funny scenes of the President of the USA, which literally reads like a list of dad jokes.
So, so clear that Dahl just didn't have anything for the main characters to do (as well as the meandering non-plot). Also one scene is very clearly ripped off from Conan Doyle's The Horror Of The Heights (while one of the poems is suspiciously Lewis Carroll-like). I guess these may be homages, but still. There was not enough original, sensible and interesting plot to have written a sequel at all.