Book Review: The Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo

My rating: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

The Lives of Saints is the newest addition to Leigh Bardugo's Grisha universe. It leads us through a detailed history of various saints and martyrs mentioned in passing throughout the original trilogy and Six of Crows, and ones that play a much larger role in her ongoing series, King of Scars. As a big fan of literally every book Leigh has written over the years, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one, and sped through it as quickly as possible. So, without further ado, here are some of my thoughts on the book.

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Three stars feels like a very underwhelming rating, and it definitely took a lot of deliberation before I decided on it. But it's not like the book was bad. I want to make that very clear. The writing was neat, clear and concise (which I appreciate! especially for this genre). Leigh used very simple language but was still able to use it to paint pictures, which is exactly what I think fairy tales and folklores should be; after all, they were passed down through words from parent to child for generations before we started penning them down. Folk tales have no use for inflated vocabulary or unnecessary detail. Their job is to tell a cautionary tale quickly and efficiently, and I believe that this book does that very well.

I also enjoyed the full colour art. I've seen some people saying that it looks elementary or poorly made, but I want to raise the point that it's from a book of folk tales, not an artist's portfolio. To me, it makes perfect sense that the book doesn't use the hyper-realistic art style. There's something ancient and thrilling about seeing art that captures the time and culture of a place so accurately that it stays in your mind as a backdrop the entire time you read the story.

So, if I enjoyed the book so much, why the mediocre rating?

Here's my deal: there's just no way to be original or creative with this genre anymore. Most of the stories vaguely resembled things I'd already read, heard, and seen before, not only because I grew up in a multicultural household but also just from popular media online. Now, this isn't really Leigh Bardugo's fault. After all, many people have been saying that new and original book concepts don't really exist because of the oversaturation of stories today. However, I did find myself not really engaging with the book very deeply. The stories were short because they were folk tales, but that also meant I didn't get to bond with any of the characters. After a while, each saint started feeling the same, and I honestly can't recall that many vivid details to set most of them apart. It's even worse for the side characters. I don't even remember any names, let alone personality traits. I couldn't help but compare it to The Language of Thorns. Both serve a similar purpose. They provide cultural context for the main events of the story and help readers connect more with the different nations in Leigh's books. Not only was the art more intriguing in The Language of Thorns as it built up over the pages, but I felt that the stories themselves were more unique and featured much more interesting characters and plots than The Lives of Saints.

This also leads me to my next point-- the book is pretty predictable. After you read the first couple stories, there are only so many ways the rest can end-- (a) happily ever after, (b) the villagers kill the saint, (c) the saint is martyred. Once again, I know this is intentional. Anyone who's familiar with Leigh Barugo's source material will know that the saints in the Grisha universe tend to lead unhappy, short lives. There are reasons why villagers accused saints of witchcraft and black magic. But that doesn't really change the reading experience. Even though the stories themselves weren't bad, it's difficult to be interested about a plot when you already know how it's going to end, and when you've read variations of the same thing for the past 100 pages.

On the whole, I think this book is a decent companion to the Grisha trilogy and Six of Crows. However, I feel like it's more of a reference book to quickly check out when a saint is brought up rather than something to read from cover to cover. I guess this explains why Alina never touched the copy of the book that was given to her by the Apparat. Once again, nothing wrong with it being a reference book, but it just failed to meet my expectations.