Hatchling

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Ga'Hoole is victorious, but far from the great tree, in the bitter ashes of defeat under a full moon, Nyroc is born. And he will be bred to monstrous evil.

Kludd is dead. Nyra, his mate, is determined that her hatchling, Nyroc, will fulfill his father's destiny: the vicious oppression of all the owl kingdoms. But Nyroc is a poor student of evil. A light grows in his heart, fed by scraps of forbidden legend and strange news of a place where goodness and nobility reign. He must summon all his courage to defy his destiny -- and the embodiment of evil that is his mother.

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School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-6-The fascistic Pure Ones, a tribe of barn owls who believe that they alone are fit to rule, lost their king, the evil Kludd, during a great battle in The Burning (Scholastic, 2004). In this seventh book in the series, Kludd's sinister widow Nyra continues to plot to conquer all of the owl kingdoms, especially the heroic, egalitarian owls who dwell in the great tree of Ga'Hoole. She raises her hatchling son Nyroc to one day take his father's place and teaches him to believe in the power of hate. But the older he grows, the more he disagrees with his mother's ways, and after he learns the horrible truth about a deadly ceremony the Pure Ones have planned for him, he realizes that he must leave his home and his mother. While Lasky has combined fascinating details of how real owls live with her imaginary civilization, the story lacks any humor that might relieve its dreariness. The Hatchling often lumbers rather than soars.-Walter Minkel, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.