148°
By Dancewithknives

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Initial Thoughts
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The story itself is an interesting one. It descends through several layers of storytelling, of the initial, first-person narrator telling a story about his grandfather telling him a story. It reminds me of Stand by Me in a way, of an older voice trying to convey the feelings and thoughts of their childhood memories. 148° follows a troop of colt scouts on a camping trip through in the desert, and while there, the narrator’s grandfather joins the colts around the fire. He tells the scouts a story of when he was a kid, just like them, on a day when the temperature was 148 degrees, just like then.

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Story
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The story-line itself is solid, and in fact does very well to infuse itself with the myth and mysteriousness of the wild west. In fact, that is what I like the most. This story does a very nice job of painting a wild west feel, and capitalizes upon that throughout. It does well to remain true to the arc, and also in not taking any extra concepts or ideas that would bog the story down. It is simple, yet very effective, and even throws in a few nice touches along the way.

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Narration
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The narration of the story is give-and-take. At times it works well for reasons such as suspense or introductions, but there are some slip-ups. Namely, the exposition on the climate of the region could be winnowed down to about three paragraphs. The narration takes a long time in getting to the actual point of the story, which is the grandfather’s story. It’s here that I feel the author tried to explain a little too much, whereas if he were more direct and sparse with details, he could’ve hooked into our attention much sooner. Generally, as the story progressed, the narration became better.

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Technique
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Grammatically, the story is fine. It passes all major checks and seems to have a firm grasp on sentence structuring and comma usage. However, there were some smaller issues with punctuating for dialogue, such as here:

“...scooted closer to the fire and asked. ‘Well… if they were so dangerous…’”

And here:

“‘Really?’ somepony asked, ‘You were around for super hot day too?’”

Unfortunately there are a few typos and errors such as this, but nothing too distracting from the content itself. The grandfather’s accent and pronunciations are confusing to a point, though, and interrupt the reading when they grow tedious. It was a good effort to bring him to life, although I feel it could’ve been handled better with the old adage “less is more”.

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General Tips
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Following the errors pointed out over the course of this review, I’d like to say first and foremost that this was a nice story. It does many things well, but of course, everything can become better.

When arriving into a story, I’d argue that your main priority is to capture the reader. Give him/her a piece of bait and make sure he/she bites into it and takes hold. A lot of people refer to it as “the hook”, and that’s what I think would help this story the most. We come in and get the meteorological setup of the setting, instead. It isn’t the most attention-grabbing thing in the world, and much of it doesn’t have an impact on the story. Is it useful? Yes. Do we need this much detail? Likely not. Especially for short stories like these, we don’t need as much of the world to be described unless it’s pivotal to the story. A healthy dose of skepticism in every paragraph you write (ask yourself, “do I need this for my story to make sense?”) will go a long way.

This principle applies for condensed stories like the one you’ve written. You only have so much time with the reader’s attention, so being selective with your details, expositions, and general attention with your narration can go a long way.

With your grammar, just be sure to give it another sweep or two during editing. You demonstrated the knowledge how to punctuate dialogue correctly in other parts of the story, so I’m assuming it’s down to missing it during the editing stages. My only advice is to maybe give your eyes a few days before editing. Your eyes burn out easily, so giving them a break will do wonders for discovering errors. Or, just pass it along to another proofreader.

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Verdict
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Recommended

This is a solid story with some really interesting ideas. It doesn’t try to do too, too much, and accomplishes it well. There were some issues with pacing and minor ones with grammar, but a good read nonetheless. In particular, the western vibe to it was excellent.