YMMV / Guardians of Ga'Hoole

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The owls having snakes as housekeepers sounds like the sort of thing that could never happen in real life. But western screech owls really do place live blind snakes in their nests to prey on insect parasites.
• Crack Pairing: Some people ship Otulissa and Kludd. Yes, it is real.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Kludd. Despite his murderous tendencies, many fans like him and draw "cute" fanart of him.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans think that everything after "The Hatchling"—when Nyroc came on the scene—is inferior to the first few books.
• Fridge Brilliance: Spell Nyra backwards. It spells "Aryan", minus one "a".
  • At first it seems kind of strange that the author would have a second set of villains in addition to the Nazis, who operated in a very similar manner, but with a different ideology...then it hits you that they're the Communists, and the whole world is basically pre-WWII Germany.
• It Was His Sled: Nearly every fan knows Kludd is Metal Beak. Except in the movie, where he's not (yet).
• Moral Event Horizon: Kludd trying to kill Soren.
• Narm: A lot of the made-up vocab is hard to take seriously, especially the curse words. Just try cussing someone out with terms like "sprink" and "racdrops" without sounding utterly ridiculous.
  • And of course, the wind phenomenon that Ezylryb calls "baggywrinkles". Which, ironically, is an actual nautical term, though it's a ship part rather than a wind pattern (not that it's any less giggle-worthy as a result).
• Narm Charm: Otulissa chewing out Dewlap. There's no way for the sentence "SPRINK ON YOUR SPRONK!" to ever not sound extremely stupid, but the context makes it quite satisfying nonetheless.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The reason why owlets captured by St. Aggie's never grow proper wing feathers. They use vampire bats to suck out their blood every month. To say nothing of all the Mind Control used by them and the Pure Ones.
  • Some of the Family-Unfriendly Violence, which is often described in rather graphic detail. Particularly in The Hatchling, where Nyra rips out and eats another owl's heart, which is so traumatic it makes Nyroc do a full-blown Heel–Face Turn. If there is ever a sequel to The Movie, the developers will be hard-pressed to keep it PG.
• Tear Jerker: Nyra doesn't know how to truly love anyone. She might have loved Kludd, but it seems she just loved his violent nature. When Coryn asks Nyra if she loves him, she can't even say the words and Coryn doesn't understand her. Then she calls him "my love" to manipulate Coryn into doing his Pure One induction ritual. But she clearly doesn't see her son when she looks at him: she sees her mate Kludd.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Ifghar joining up with the Pure Ones amounts to nothing, since Ezylryb dies before anything can be done with it.
• Too Cool to Live: We'll miss you, Strix Struma. Ezylryb and Grimble also qualify.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: There are some extremely gory injuries described in the series. To elaborate: The very first book contains attempted fratricide, brainwashing, child enslavement, some fairly graphic violence, and cannibalism.

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