The Outer Sphere

Ok, let's start with style cause its the first one in the box thingie.

Starts off a little shaky not gonna lie. There's a little weird transition before the story really gets going. But once it gets going it really gets going, the author finds his sea-legs really fast and even the 'shaky' part is better than 90% of the crap on this site. The author has a really good grasp of the 'show don't tell' rule, I can't remember ever being told about a character except in one place where a species trait is discussed.

(However, the character of the species in question continuously makes choices in line with the stated characteristic so even without the description it's obvious). Nothing seems contrived or plot-armoury, the MC is no god-in-5-chapters and honestly not even really that 'strong' even now. It has, quite frankly, amazing pacing in my opinion. All the chapters have meaning and aren't just padding but the author understands that 'meaning' doesn't mean 'give MC a new OP ability every chapter'. yea style is great after like...chapter 2? 3ish? not a problem AT ALL

Next up is the....story.

Okey-doke the story kicks ass, its great. The setting, the way shit works and how its put together just...makes sense y'know? You ever read a story where the first thing that happens is, and I damn near almost quote, "MC fell into a spatial rift and magically fused with the seventh taigam buttplug of power, complete with an AI system. He's also a master of every magic". Gets old fast huh? Yea this isn't that at all. Everything that happens has reasons, there's no "Huh, that was really fuckin lucky" moments. Like, sure, SOMETIMES the MC gets lucky, but its always believable luck, like finding a penny, not winning 6 lotteries in all the states. I mentioned this in style but in retrospect, it should be here, the pacing is fabulous. There're no wasted chapters here, every paragraph has a clear purpose and is mostly fluff free. You won't find people talking about their "Silky chocolate hair, almond-shaped eyes with a small smattering of freckles, she uses listerene grape flavour and has a mole on her left tit" yea none of that shit. You won't be enlightened to the colour of the MCs' taint anytime soon. It's just solid, read the damn book.

NEXT....Grammar.

Didn't notice anything wrong and the authors a cool guy so would prolly fix it if you found something. 'Nuff said.

AAAAnnnddd...now the Characters!

The characters are my personal 'most important' part of a fiction. And I am pleased to announce that these characters are really good! They all have unique and pretty fleshed out personalities and I have never seen any of them get possessed by the spirit of plot convenience even once. They act like ACTUAL PEOPLE which is fucking rare on this site. The MC is not some naive 'gotta free all da slaves and adds to my harem that I'll never fuck cause I'm a fuckin tool' he's a pretty good guy but he's smart. I cannot state this enough, the MC is smart. The reason I'm so happy about this is that the author knows how to write smart people. Most of the authors on this site handle smart characters either by making them nigh-omniscient or by having them dumb as a rock until the plot needs them to decipher some aliens porno mag. This MC has got his shit together, he's no Sherlock Holmes but he can plan ahead and take steps to achieve his goals in a logical manner. Which brings me to my final point about the characters and another thing I love. The characters are proactive characters and not reactive characters. Now, you might ask: "What the fuck are you on about drone? I ain't buying your exfoliating scrub, get that weak MLM outta here!" Yea I hear you people but let me explain what I mean. The MC and the side characters DO THINGS that have EFFECTS. How many MCs have you read about who just react to shit? He killed my father! The maiden is in danger! A problem, I must fix it!, yea this MC has like a proper goal for his life. It's not fancy or elaborate, and it could maybe use a little bit more explanation, but he HAS SOMETHING. He doesn't just react to events, he MAKES EVENTS HAPPEN. For example, with a reactive MC the story might go: "A screaming woman runs into the MC out of an alley, this leads to the MC eventually taking down the criminal underbelly." whereas a proactive Mc story might go: "The MC rides up to the city with a stolen tablet under his cloak. For a couple of hours, he probes the patrons of a shady bar for information on who he might sell his stolen tablet to. After a couple deals with the shady organisation, he discovers a secret slave trade! The MC destroyed the organisation." Big difference see? In one the plot only moved forward by a freak moment of luck, in the other, the plot moved forward because of the MCs decision. I'm firmly in the camp that proactive characters are way better.

Finally...

Yea, there's no section for this but I feel it's important. The author is really friendly and totally open to criticism and new cool ideas you have. He usually responds to comments pretty quick and I feel thats pretty cool. A lot of authors might get a bit pissy if you try to give ideas, and I get it, it can be annoying. But I've personally put like 3 great walls of text in this dudes comments and he's cool with it.

4.5/5 Definately recommended.

Alright it started with a literal bang which is always nice, no op character just a bloke in a bathrobe caught in the apocalypse. It stays that kinda gritty fantasy for oh about 7 chapters. It switches fairly fast from there

Losing the gritty no free lunch litrpg feel to the more standard litrpg tropes. Main character gets a power instantly is able to get it to an op level where he can disable hundreds of enemies at once with no real draw back as it seems allies are able to easily escape but enemies are stuck. Main character comes jnto large amount of money and ie power, while thinking of basic economic schemes to get rich quick. At this point in the story the author has dropped the dimensional teenage girl side character that had some nice back and forth quips  and her own chapter in favor of a shapeshifting sucubus that likes to ahow of her boobs and ass for paragraphs. 

Is it good: ye ive enjoyed it even if it went from a good read to just another bookmark read. I imagine id enjoy it more if i liked sex scenes in my books so hey if you like lit rpgs and tits its a good read

This is one of my top five favorite internet stories (or whatever the term for stories released by chapters online is), on this site or any other. Here are some of the things you can expect in this story.

• System Apocalypse - magic stuff starts happening on earth, and humans gain special powers. It's a very light system, more cultivation with named skills. People have stats and skills, but rather than levels they have tiers and skill proficiencies. It's a fairly seemless integration of the two styles, with power progression without the characters seeming to be puppets of skills, everything is earned (or at least imaginatively BSd).
• Engaging Characters - all the characters are fun to read. The MC is a funny guy, using creative magic to pull of some crazy stunts. He's fairly amoral, but uses his "the ends justify the means" mentality for the side of, not good exactly, but at least humanity. He thinks through situations, current and future, and often comes up with a plan, but he can and does still lose. He has a vapid and sweet love interest, not in the way that she's a cardboard cut out of a character with boobs, but rather she was intended and written to be that way. There is an alien woman, who is actually written using a non human mindset as her baseline, which shows clearly through her actions and dialogue. There are a host of side characters, each written uniquely and without there individual motivations explicitly stated, yet still easy to understand.
• Massive Universe - magic hits Earth, and with magic comes monsters, but perhaps even worse is the bureaucratic Galaxy spanning government. In addition to surviving bloodthirsty monsters, humanity also needs to deal with a horde of new cultures and officials and clans and businesses, most intent on exploiting the newest land grab. The government isn't a cartoonishly evil faceless behemoth, instead it's a collection of different groups acting with recognizable and sometimes unrecognizable motivations.
• Cool Magic - the magic is cool. The MC is a wizard who's main source of power is being more creative than other people, constantly pushing the envelope of what he can and can't accomplish within his fairly narrow skill set. Related to this and the above, all the aliens/monsters are neat and have believable cultures.
• Plot - with such a massive overarching in story universe, the author still finds time to throw in handfuls of ground level antagonists or situations that the MC needs to overcome. This is done through either the previously mentioned clever magic, or using equally clever substitutions (like commercial enterprises or social maneuverings).
• Fair Warning - there is a fairly massive timeskip, a lot of people in other reviews seem to dislike it. I like it a lot, without giving too much away the MC has been punching above his weight since day 1, and when sh*t hits the fan it has repercussions.

The main reason I fell in love with this story was the quick thinking main character and the authors sense of humor. The reason I kept reading this story was I realized that if I whined at the author enough, he'd change stuff, an instant 5/5 star quality. I encourage everyone who reads this review to yell at Macronomicon, requesting your own very individual alterations to the story.

The first move is "suddenly ambush," where teh main character gets hit out of left field eevery time they try to do anything at all, by a faction, force or opponent that did not have a presence in teh story prior to that point.

The second move is "stupid, shortsighted incompetence" which describes the main character.

The first story has just barely enough of an overrching narrative to keep you reading as a guilty pleasure - particularly if you are into wierd monster/bug fetish or like the post apocalypse kingdom builder version of "suddenly litrpg system"/"suddenly the world is magic" stories. With a side of "yay drugs" for flavour.

The second story tosses out all characters and restarts the MC at zero, but stupider and less competent, but more active. This happens at chapter 100.

The world building is the most interesting part, but unfortunately is poorly utilised and the characters are shortsighted and self-sabotaging, never gaining any meaningful traction or solving any single narrative relevant problem.

and then it just becomes a completely different story that I am absolutely uninterested in. Garth had a family, a new city amid the bleakness of the apocalypse, and a pretty powerful master. The writer decided all these things were unnecessary though, so 100 chapters in, decided to hit the reset button and give us a grim medeival story instead of post-apocalyptic survival story. I am wholly disatisfied with this betrayal the story threw at me. It's like going to the store to buy mustard, but when you get home to put it on a sandwich, it's ketchup instead. Like wtf man

I have read a lot of fiction on RR. I rarely feel the need to comment on a story. So far I only bother when I come across a trending story that wastes my time by being some of the worst garbage I've ever read; hoping to save other, poor souls from sharing my fate.

Then I came across The Outer Sphere. Handful of reviews, not very popular, never heard of the author. I go in not expecting much. Starts off with an interesting (new) take on the "system hits earth" genre and then it really takes off with impressive world building and good writing. The writing starts off alright. But later chapters have had me literally laughing out loud. Fairly rare thing for a story to manage.

Don't let the lack of reviews mislead you. Not perfect but pretty entertaining. This one is worth giving a shot.

Was a fun story until chapter 100 when the author decides to just invalidate the entire story up to that point rendering the previous chapters worthless. 

 Recomendations:

The story is goood up to chapter 100 when the whloe story changes out of left field and everything you care about in the story is gone replaced with grimdark.

Moving from a base building/ fighting and drug dealing litrpg to destroy everything i want a grimdark story.

It just killed everything that made me read up to chapter 100 in the first place making me feel like i wasted my time. hoping that maby it would go back to normal some how until i read 7 more chapters and realized  that this was where i ended the story Sigh.

Just think that the first 100 stories where the real story and the author pulled wammy on us  by killing off the rest of the cast and ended the story with out such an happy ending.

(After 100 it's just plot holes and i haven't read pass 107 so if theirs something worth it please pm me on how the story ends)

 I don't get it. I just don't understand!!! Why would you write a story, build up characters, a world, a narrative - and then just kill everything off out of nowhere and start over!

It may as well be a different story altogether after that chapter, everything that came before is just backstory now.

Edit: Warning, the following review only applies to the story pre chapter 100. Apparently the author lost interest in his previous plot and did a very hard reset.

I think most of us know magic system apocalypse stories. A few have found a permament place amongst the top 20 of RR. But most of them have either unsympathetic protagonists and/or overpowered protagonists.

This isn't the case here. The protagonist is neither a psychopath, nor an unredeemable White Knight. He's a smart person, thrown into a shitty situation and given a decent cheat. And that's all it is. Not an insurmountable advantage, not a god-mode. Overall the guy largely succeeds on his smarts. He's the guy to use traps and run away or surrender if necessary.

As for the story it's a sytem/mana apocalypse setting. The protagonist is basically just trying to survive and thrive. Friends and enemies derive from either the setting or his quest for survival. That said his ultimate goal is to find love and live a happy life, not to become the ultimate power.

There's some hints of more plot behind this, but as of chapter 35 it's still largely about adjusting to the apocalypse.