Author: Leigh Bardugo
Series: Grishaverse
Publisher: Macmillan
Released: October 6th, 2020/December 8th, 2020 (Audio)
Narrators: Ben Barnes, Lauren Fortgang
Received: Own

The Lives and Saints, written by Leigh Bardugo, fits nicely in with the rest of her Grishaverse series. These are all of the stories that have been alluded to this whole time. The good, the beautiful, the horrifying, and the bad.

Thanks to Shadow and Bone heading over to Netflix, The Lives of Saints got a lovely edition for all the fans out there. Better yet, there’s also an audiobook worth listening to. Narrated by Ben Barnes and Lauren Fortgang, it’s not something you want to miss out on. Trust me on this.

The Lives of Saints is a collection of short stories, set in the Grishaverse. Each one follows a saint of the world, from those commonly mentioned in both series, to those that are going to be quite a surprise.

“You can choose faith or you can choose fear. But only one will bring what you long for.”

The Lives of Saints is such a wonderful and heartbreaking novel, all in one. It’s bittersweet, just as I imagined it would be. I loved this book so much that I listened to it and read it – there are so many little details to pick up on.

Also, I am SO glad that I got caught up (including the King of Scars) before diving into this read. There is a lot of subtext I would have missed out on otherwise!

The design and artwork of this novel are stunning, making it appear as if it really were a collection of tales in this world. You can almost picture any of the characters reading it (many would not actually read it, hence the almost part of that sentence).

That being said, it is also heartbreaking. Think about what it is to be a saint. What Alina went through, for example. All the pain and sacrifice. These aren’t all happy stories, nor did I expect them to be.

Yet I still maintain that it’s worth reading, and even more worthwhile to listen to. Any Grishaverse fan will doubtless get lots of new information/reasons to fangirl from it. For example: The Starless Saint. Need I say more?