Guardians of Ga'Hoole - Story

Story

This series follows the adventures of Soren, a young Barn Owl, for the first six books, but follows Nyroc, Soren's nephew, later renamed Coryn, for books seven through eight, and twelve through fifteen. Books nine through eleven are half-prequels to the other books, following Hoole, the first king of the Ga'Hoole Tree.

In the first volume, The Capture, Soren, who lives in a nest with his parents and siblings Kludd and Eglantine in a forest kingdom called Tyto, is pushed out of the nest by Kludd. When he cries out to his parents for help, Soren is found and snatched by a patrol of the evil owls from the St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls, or St. Aggie's. Soren and other snatched owlets are enslaved into tasks such as sorting eggs and pellets, for reasons they don't quite understand. Owls at St. Aggies are “moon blinked”, a brainwashing technique caused by sleeping under the full moon and also marching under the light of the full moon and endlessly repeating their true names to forget them so as to lose sense of self and will. Soren befriends a young Elf Owl named Gylfie (from the desert kingdom of Kuneer), who, like him, is resistant to the moon-blinking, by staying awake during full shine, and together they plot both to discover as much as possible about the true purpose behind St. Aggie's and to escape. The two also befriend a Spotted Owl named Hortense who has stunted growth and delayed development of her flight feathers. This enables her not only to pass herself off as an owlet, she also resists moon-blinking and rescues snatched eggs from suffering the same fate as the other owlets. She is eventually found out and is thrown off of a cliff by a St. Aggie's pit guardian, Finny. Soren and Gylfie manage to resist moon blinking, learn to fly with the help of an imperfectly moon-blinked owl named Grimble, and to escape with Grimble's assistance. Grimble is murdered the night Soren and Gylfie escape by Skench and Spoorn. After escaping, they then meet Twilight, an orphan Great Grey Owl who learned his survival instincts from the "Orphan School of Tough Learning", Digger, a Burrowing Owl, who lost his family to the St. Aggie's marauders and is extremely sensitive and philosophical, and the blind Mrs. Plithiver, Soren's former nest-maid snake. With the help of Hortense's two Bald Eagle friends named Streak and Zan, they kill two of St. Aggie's patrols, the cousins Jatt and Jutt. The four owls form a band and fly away in search of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, where legend says the great knight-owls live who are dedicated to doing good deeds and eventually find it. Soren later finds out that Kludd, or "Metal Beak", as he is better known, and an army of tyto owls (barn owls) are plotting to take over the entire owl universe with tytos. He is also responsible for almost brainwashing Eglantine with weird babbling about "The purity of tytos". Eglantine joins Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger in finding out more about Kludd and his army. Kludd is the leader of "The Pure Ones", an army of Tyto owls. A war then begins between the Pure Ones and the Guardians of Ga'Hoole. The army's king, Kludd, is killed by Twilight in Book 6: The Burning, but the story continues their encounters with the Pure Ones until the end of the series in the 15th book, The War of the Ember.