The Capture

Title: The Capture

Author: Kathryn Lasky

Summary: Soren is snatched by the owls of St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls.  The Academy, also known as St. Aggie's, "moon blinks" their owls, causing them to mindlessly obey what the Academy tells them.  Gylfie, another owl, helps Soren resist being moon blinked.  Together they discover a plot to control all owls.  Two owls who secretly oppose St. Aggie's help Soren and Gylfie to escape.  Their names are Hortense and Grimble, and both are discovered and killed.  Once outside, Soren and Gylfie meet Twilight and Digger.  Both owls have been affected by St. Aggie's egg and owlet snatchings.  Together, they set off for the island where it is said the legendary Ga'Hoole owls live.  

Stars: 8.  The characters and description were amazing.   

Violence: 6, for when Hortense and Grimble are killed.  An owl who discovers Hortense giving one of the eggs she sits on to an eagle pushes Hortense off a cliff.  Her death isn't visually described.  The only thing said was that Hortense's voice grew fainter.  
Grimble, who fought an owl to help Soren and Gylfie escape St. Aggie's, was killed in that fight.  Soren and Gylfie were flying (and it was told from their perspective) so not much was described.  The "torn owl, bleeding and mortally wounded" was said to have "torn wings [and a] head at a weird angle", but that was it.  
The vampire bats who came and sucked owls' blood as a part of the St. Aggie's regime were not described in bloody detail.  (In fact, not a speck of blood was described . . .)  The procedure was quite ghastly enough.  

Romance: 0.  Finally I review a book with no romance.  

Language: 0.  There were no swear words, but there was one invented bad word (like D'Arvit in Artemis Fowl).  It was "racdrops", short for raccoon droppings.  

Appropriate for:  8 and up.  

Other: The description was amazing.  The best scene was Grimble's death.  "The night was splattered with blood" completely captured the spirit of the moment without giving too many gruesome details.  It also calls the reader's attention away from the physical cruelty of the murder and hints at the disruption of a larger cosmic order.  
A movie based on the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series came out recently.  It's apparently based on the first three books. Here's the review (written by my friend Gecko).