Hello all, and welcome to my first review done for this group! I hope to be getting to know all of you better in the future!

Today, after a week of general lollygagging and being unproductive, I finally got around to reading and reviewing this story. I will do this review as with the theme of this group. Firm, fair, and never condescending. These criticisms will contain some opinions of mine alongside the facts. If you find me to be wrong on some point, I will not apologize for calling it like I see it.

Now on to the meat and potatoes of the review!

I tend to think of stories as something along the lines of the process of forming a diamond. Diamonds start life as peat, and through time and pressure, they become coal and eventually the diamonds that are brought to the surface to shine before our eyes.

A story is much the same. It starts life as an idea, then goes through processes to refine the idea into a lump of coal. Then through lengthy processes that require massive amounts of work, they are transformed from uninteresting works into beautiful, valuable pieces of literature for us to all admire.

If I were to place it along a certain point in that process, I would put Bonnibelle and Clyde at the point of the lump of coal, buried deep underground and interesting to few. To put it bluntly, Bonnibelle and Clyde falls flat in execution.

The story follows the exploits of one stallion named Clyde, as the title would suggest. The point of view does stay fixated on him from a third-person limited point of view, which I can respect that attention to detail to refrain from showing internal detail on any other characters. There is not much to improve in this aspect, as it was carried out effectively.

Though the point of view was done and held itself consistently throughout the piece, the overall style left much to be desired. The presentation lacked many things, so I’ll start by naming the biggest issue I have with it.

There is far too much telling going on in this story to be effectively conveyed. There is a bit of a gray area on where a good mix of showing and telling comes into play, as every reader is different. I tend to lean towards striking a careful balance. Tell the story where details are unimportant and where time skips are a possibility. Show the story at the moments of importance.

This story stuck to telling, rarely making use of the show side of the scale. Thus, it lost a very large amount of reader impact by not detailing the major parts and just skimming over them. For a story taking place in quite different AU than the show we all know and love, your lack of worldbuilding is a crippling shortcoming in getting your readers properly in the groove of reading the story. A lot of the time, things felt vague and I cannot say that it had any sort of register with me. In order to improve your presentation, spend more time fleshing out the parts of the story that matter.

Execution was also quite lackluster. I found it very difficult to immerse myself in the world that had been set up, which can refer back to the note on worldbuilding. Though i was able to follow along with the narrative and understand what was taking place, I often found that the rushed pacing would trip me up. The story remained in nearly the exact same level of detail throughout, which is consistent in a bad way. Storytelling is dynamic, and if you don’t have changes in tempo throughout, you’re simply doing the same boring thing, whether it be over or underdone on the descriptions.

Whew, I’m ready to get to where I can be positive again.

In regards to flow, you did a better job at it than with your worldbuilding and pacing. The presentation was quick and vague (I would estimate that it would add around an extra 3000 words or so if it were done properly), but you did keep the story moving in a fairly smooth manner. There were some grammar hiccups along the way, but I was able to keep moving along throughout. Not top marks for flow, but definitely not poor either. Some improvement is necessary to bring the lump of coal you have here up to the standards to be called a diamond.

Glad all of that negativity is out of the way. I hate having to knock things so heavily, but there are many issues to address if this story is ever to become a diamond for the Zales counter. Anyhoo, on to the next facet of our review!

The story is billed as a romantic comedy with an adventure twist, and I feel that it did execute that mood well. I found it to be lighthearted and generally a happy take on a dangerous and deadly profession. Kind of fitting for a story that takes place in Equestria, in truth. You seemed to aim for a goofy vibe since Clyde had Rarity along for his robbery. I went in expecting that and was not disappointed in that aspect.

Though a few things struck me as overly goofy and kind of jarring, such as Sheriff Silver Star shouting “Stop right there criminal scum!” like Clyde was playing Elder Scrolls, or when the jewelry store owner divulged to a complete stranger that he was going to go get wasted drunk, I don’t have anything to give for improvements to be made in setting the mood.

Ah, grammar. The thing that transforms a bookish shut-in, to a raving nazi ranting about how all things must be correct or they must be obliterated. Not only does it have to power to cause a drastic metamorphosis in us word nerds, it has the power to boost a story to greatness or drag it down into the dirt.

In Bonnibelle, the grammar is not quite there. You often make odd word choices and make small mistakes that would be made most commonly in everyday speech. There were a lot of minor errors in grammar throughout, and though they did have a sizeable impact on my own personal experience, they did not make it any more difficult to understand the story’s plot. Because the grammar errors were not catastrophic, I can’t call it bad grammar. However, there were a smorgasbord of little errors that kept feeling like stepping on a small pebble barefoot. I was able to keep going, but it kept annoying me ever so slightly when i noticed the small slip ups.

On this group’s little A-F scale for grammar, I rate yours as between B- and C+. Needs work, but is not offensive.

I will refrain from putting anything that goes into spoiler territory on this review. To the author: If you want some more specific details on improvements to be made, please shoot me a PM so I can hit you with my knowledge.

As for tips, I did not read that far into the rubric and cut my tips section up into tidbits and scattered it throughout the review above. Therefore, I won’t be making a section to reiterate what I already covered above.

And now for the big sticker that we slap on these to sum up what took 1250 words above in one or two.

Unfortunately, I can’t give this story a great rating with all of the big problems it has. For my final verdict, I give this story the rating of:

That’s all I have to say about this story for today. Thank you to the crew here at PCaRG for giving me this shot at joining their ranks! Thanks to all you who read this review, and a shout-out to Mr. T for scaring me into staying in school as a child so I would be educated enough to be here.

Also a big tip of the fedora to BRyeMC for submitting his story to my ranting, and I really hope you can take some of my advice to heart and use it to improve this story and any others you write.

This is Jack_mahoff, signing off.

4084966 Thank you for your time that you spent reading and for this review!

I'm disappointed in myself for all the grammar hiccups, but I will take all of your tips and words into consideration and give this story, and the next two in the series, another good, clean wash.

I just keep seeing the title of this one and thinking of "Clyde" as the fanon name for Pinkie Pie's father, Igneous. Then I want it to be about the secret life of an outlaw that he left behind when he changed his name, married, and settled down on the rock farm.

4085622 You aren't the only one. I received two or three PMs about that so far in the time I've been on this site.

4084966 My enjoyment of this story was moderate. While I can't say I despised it, there was a part of me that found a small piece of the story entertaining. For me, it was all a 5/10. The work it needed was clear, and it's very easy to fix the errors made in the story. I guess the part of me that wasn't really enjoying it didn't take it too seriously; I'd say I had some senseless fun.