My History With and Thoughts On Guardians of Ga'hoole

For this month, instead of a countdown, I want to share my history with and feelings toward a certain franchise with qualities that I both enjoyed and didn't. Let me know what y'all think!

And as always, all of this is my opinion, so feel free to disagree!

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When I was six or seven, my family took a trip to an apartment that my aunt and uncle were staying at at the time. At one point, we rented a few DVDs from Redbox, and I was hoping that among them, we'd start with How to Train Your Dragon. But we didn't.

Instead, we first watched a movie called Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole.

I hadn't known anything about it before, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It was a fantasy adventure featuring anthropomorphic owls fighting against the evil Pure Ones. As the years went by, I didn't revisit the movie, but it was still in the back of my mind.

Eventually, I found out it was based on a book series, and I purchased the only book I could find at the time, the prequel book, The Rise of a Legend. From there, my engagement with the franchise began.

Sometime after that, I rewatched the movie. There was a lot about it I liked, especially the animation and atmosphere, but I felt that it was too fast-paced and some of the characters could've been handled better. But even so, I knew it was adapting three books into one 97 minute movie, so of course they had a lot to fit in. I supposed I'd enjoy the books more.

Around that time, I started reading TRoaL. (Spoiler Warning for it from here on out!) I enjoyed it at first, as just like the movie based on this series, it had an amazing atmosphere, but over time, I found it harder and harder to be engaged with the story. That was because of a fundamental flaw with almost every scene: a lack of setbacks.

At the end of almost every conflict, the main protagonist succeeded, getting out of every situation with everything working out for him. They weren't even cases of "Success, but with a noteworthy cost". Because of that, there wasn't any good tension throughout the story. There was one scene I liked where he lost his sister, but one scene isn't enough to carry a whole book. I remember reading up to about the start of the fourth quarter before I moved it to the DNF zone.

But even with that, I bought and intended to read the first three books in the series. I started with The Capture.

I started reading it at my grandmother's old house, a place where I found it easier to get lost in a book. I have fond memories of my time with certain books there, like Ice Wolves or Darkstalker. But unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the first Ga'hoole book as much as I'd hoped. It had nice moments and characters, but the pacing was just too slow for me.

I had the opposite problem with it than the movie — the book's pacing was too slow, while the movie's pacing was too fast!

But still, I wanted to read the next book, The Journey. I can't remember much of my experience when I first started reading it, but I wasn't enjoying myself, so I ended up labeling it as indefinitely paused. Although that went on for a time, I felt obligated to finish the book, so when I picked it back up, I forced myself to finish it.

And that was the last time I ever forced myself to finish a book.

I can't remember anything about it, just how miserable I was in making myself reach its end. And I was happy when it was over.

What with all I've said, I want to let you guys know that I don't think these books are trash. Lots of people enjoy them, and a series popular enough to get a movie is always deserving of some credit. And given the amount of her publications as well as her rewards, I'm in awe of Mrs. Lasky's work. I didn't decide to write about these books because I thought they were bad, but because I thought they had aspects I liked and didn't like that clashed for me in interesting ways, and also because I thought my history with them was worth sharing.

With that said, I don't think these books are for me. I started on the third book, The Rescue, a few years ago, but I didn't really enjoy it, so I moved it to the DNF zone and gave all my copies of the books to some family friends I knew would enjoy them more.

As I close, I want to say that if you enjoy these books, that's great! I'm happy that you could get some happiness from them that I couldn't. But for me, I don't consider them either good or bad, but...distinctive. Distinctive and interesting.

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My third book, The Destroyed Country, is OUT!!!!! You can find a link to its Amazon page on the link I left right there!

But before that, let me know if you enjoyed this post! I'd love to do one like this for the Warrior Cats books!