Thrilling read, glad I picked it up, Its an amazing sequel to first. It keeps the suspense and thrill of the first and ramps it up. ( )

‘In the twilight hour
We are home in our tree
We are owls, we are free’ (p. 139)

Guardians of Ga’Hoole’s second book tells about Soren and his band (Twilight, Digger, Gylfie and Mrs. Plithiver) when they finally arrive at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.

At the Tree they meet other owls:
Boron and Barran, king and queen of Hoole;
Bubo, the blacksmith;
Madame Plonk, the singer;
Otulissa, the never ending talking owl, she is a bookworm;
and Ezylryb, (so far, my favourite character), he is a Whiskered Screech Owl, the wise weather interpretation teacher, and Soren’s mentor.

The Great Ga’Hoole Tree is home for many owls, there is also a school. Every owl has to improve its skills following a chaw.

Soren begins to discover his own flying powers, so his mentor Ezylryb says: ‘There are many ways to learn - through books, through practice, and through gizzuition (from the word gizzard, a digestive organ behind the stomach of birds). They are all good ways, but few of us have gizzuition (intuition).’ (p. 198)

At the end of the book a surprise: between several owlets grounded and wounded, there is ... ( )

I did not read the first book in the series. This book was on the book exchange shelf and looked interesting, so I picked it up. I think reading the first book in this series might have made it easier to figure out the various owl characters. (Trust me, you will learn a lot about different owls, though sometimes it is hard to tell what is true in our world and what is the author's creation.)

In one sense, it reminded me of another YA series a friend's children have read (The Ranger's Apprentice). There's a group of friends who eventually get selected to go into avenues of study that hone their skills--different skills for each one--yet who will probably still interact with each other (and I'm suspecting eventually combine all their various skills into one important mission).

I like the friendship between the various types of owls (though I don't know in nature if owls of different species congregate together). I like that they've formed their own "family" and that they recognize different strengths and weaknesses in each other and try to help each other out.

I don't know if the owls are supposed to be "magical"--I went back and forth on this. I am hoping not. I would prefer to see a scientific basis behind the owl enclave etc. (However, I did see another reviewer indicate that future books emphasize the magical more than this book did.)

Some of the subject matter of the book reminds me a bit of the original Star Trek--which tried to tackle societal problems that might normally be taboo for television but were able to be written into a science fiction set in the future script. I'm not sure how successful this is in this series though.

Owls view themselves as the "best"--particularly compared to other birds that they call "wet poopers". (Apparently the author's attempt at bathroom humor to cater to her YA audience.) which comes across as "racism"--and it extends even to the teachers/leaders of the owl clan which is a bit disheartening. I could understand if the younger owls thought this and had to be taught the value of other bird species--and perhaps events in future books will address this issue, but it's not addressed here.

There are bad/evil owls who capture and mistreat other owls which could be a take on bullying--I have more faith that this will be addressed in the series than I do the previous issue. I also saw another reviewer mention cannibalism as one of the issues that they wondered about in the series. ( )

I think that this book hooked me a bit more than the first one did. Life at the dystopian St. Aggie's was interesting, but life at the Great Ga'Hoole tree seemed richer in a sense that I'm not sure I can explain.

My biggest complaint about this book was that sometimes it felt like the author told too much rather than showing it. There are two big examples I can think of. One was the main character owls forming a band. This bond is significant and likely to continue throughout the rest of the series, but it felt a little forced upon us with the way she told us it fell into place, especially when Digger was still fairly new to the group. I think it would have been more meaningful of we could have watched the bond form naturally without it feeling so heavy-handed.

Similarly, the introduction to the Mirror Lakes was all exposition. The hypnotic effects of this place posed a huge threat to the first half of this story, but I as a reader never felt them personally because they were described to me in such a detached manner. Additionally, I felt like more should have been done with this concept. It hovers like a half-threat as the owls consider going back there instead of to Ga'Hoole, but they don't, and then it's sort of forgotten. Since they kept thinking about it after they left, I wanted it to be more significant, either truly separating the band for a while or coming up later on in the story, and I was disappointed that it never did, though I acknowledge that it might in future books. ( )

Read aloud to my child. We found there were lots to talk about while Soren discovered different things about himself. ( )