Reviews for Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologist: A Candid Profile of Some Geologists and Their Sci...

The average rating for Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologist: A Candid Profile of Some Geologists and Their Sci... based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-09-04 00:00:00 Michael Kubasek Lionheart’s scribe is about a crippled 15-year-old boy named Matthew, he is a scribe and records the 3rd crusade in his journal. Matthew lives on the island of Sicily in Messina and spends his days working as an apprentice. One day he hears from someone that King Philip from France and King Richard the Lionheart would come to meet in his hometown. They were stopping by to prepare to journey to the Holy Land. Months pass and King Philip has already left for the Holy Land, and King Richard is preparing to leave as well. Matthew creeps onto a ship as a stowaway hoping he could go on the crusade. When they are sailing they rammed into a Muslim ship, the passengers were drowning, and snakes were let loose into the waters. Matthew rescued a young girl named Yusra and Richard’s sister, Queen Joan took care of her. The next day they landed on Arce and the crusade was finally progressing somewhere. I liked the characters in the book. I like Matthew because he goes from being mistreated by his master to serving the amazing Lionheart. It is also cool how he is crippled on one leg because most protagonists do not have disabilities, so having one makes me pay attention more. Yusra is a cool character, she experiences a tragedy because her parents died when Lionheart’s ships rammed into Yusra’s. She was taken as a prisoner but treated like royalty. Matthew was kind enough to save her and get her to Jerusalem safely. Characters like King Richard and Salah-Ud-Din were characters that are really amazing because they were leaders of armies. King Richard was a ferocious fighter and makes the knights happy by cheering them on. He was also very strategic in his tactics and his critical thinking made him win many of the battles. I liked king Richard because of his strategies. Salah-Ud-Din was a coward, he made his soldiers die and had very bad strategies. Something I did not like about the book is the ending. The book was about the 3rd crusade so once it was over the book had to end. After King Richard made a peace treaty with Salah-Ud-Din he travelled back to England, this is according to many sources. The book just ended with Matthew writing down that he will go back to England with Richard. I get that it is the end but I was expecting an epilogue about how his life was after the crusade. The author depicted the historical reality by having the protagonist Matthew communicate with us through his journal. His journal is the book, and we do not get to see Matthew outside of the book. The journal tells us about Matthews life at the age of 15 to 17, he experiences historical battles like the Battle of Arsuf, serving the king, and experiencing sickness. His journal has dates written down on the pages, those dates could have been fake made-up stories but dates of battles matched up perfectly fine. The dates lined up really smooth with the timing of historical events, occasionally Matthew would skip days, up to a month because he is “busy”.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-01-30 00:00:00 Douglas M Mac Millan Lionheart’s Scribe by Karleen Bradford follows Matthew, a young boy with a crippled foot. Matthew is a scribe working for his master Vulgrin in Sicily and is extremely excited to find out that King Richard of England is visiting while on crusade. After becoming fed up with Vulgrin Matthew escapes onto a crusade ship. On his journey Matthew meets many important monarchs and even continues his work as a scribe. This story is full of interesting characters and exciting true events. One thing I really liked about this story was how the author showed different perspectives of the crusade. She showed how the Christian army viewed it as a service to god and thought that Muslims were going against god, whereas the Muslims thought they were just defending their land. Something I didn’t like about this book was the anti-climactic ending. I understand that as a historical fiction book the author wanted to make the ending historically accurate, but I would have appreciated a more interesting ending. I think this book was historically accurate because it accurately described true events and incorporated real people living during that time.