The Lives of Saints

I know a little about the Shadow and Bones series. I read the first book around the time it came out but wasn't really interested in reading the rest of the series. Last year I read Six of Crows and of course I watched the show on Netflix. Basically, I came into this book knowing a little bit about the Grishaverse. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful that it is almost a shame that they are not painted on a large canvas. They defiantly mimic the Catholic Orthodox paintings of saint with some modern and fanatical elements. The stories go with each of the illustration very well. The main reason that I only gave it 4 stars instead of 5 was because the saints that were actual charters in the stories are written somewhat different from all the other saints. The other saints get the story of how they became saint. Where as Alina's story for example is just someone praying to her and then at the end telling us briefly what she was saint of and what she did. I'm not quite sure when this book is supposed in this timeline. For example is Alina an newly added to the saints and that is way there is not much about her? I think it would have been more interesting to have it written like the rest of the saints with inaccuracies or just making her more “pure-of-heart” or “righteous” then it was in her book. The idea of how history portrays a person and how they really were is fascinating and I personally think it was something that could have been explored more.