The Outer Sphere

This is a fun story that I am enjoying immensely.  I was recommended it with the warning of a story change at chapter 100.  It's what is complained about a lot in the reviews.  It is just a time skip.  A rather large time skip.  I beleive the story was good before the change and better after it.  Before the skip it was getting a bit stale with a plateau of power and lack of story progression.  The change fixes this and makes it more interesting.  Highly recommended.

Very well written, the story is great, the mc is great, the author has some great ideas and implements them well.

like others have said everything changes at chapter 100. It’s honestly a completely different story. I can see why the author did it and I can understand why people are mad about it. 

Personally, I don’t mind it. It could have been executed better, maybe giving a bit more closure to what was essentially the end of one story but I can also see why you would want it to stay open ended, it let’s then readers feel the frustration of the MC to some extent. 

I still enjoy the story and I look forward to continue reading it, even if it is a very different one to the one I started reading. Keep up the good work! 

This review contains spoilers.

The style and grammar are great. I understand everything that is happening and was pulled in for the first 40 to 50 chapters.

The story is also solid, the mysteries were slowly being unraveled and I never felt confused with the story.

The character is what made me drop the story. You are telling me that some nobody suddenly has thoughts of "saving the human race" after getting his power. I get that, but the way that the guy's decisions are written makes it seem like he is impulsive. The author glosses over the entire economics of how he makes money. So he basically has an infinite source which he uses along with his power to somehow gain the trust of his fellow humans. So many holes. Why should they trust him? He has no experience leading. He doesn't seem to have any charisma. You cant just waive off the entire logistics behind feeding, clothing, providing jobs for, and settling disputes with money and it's the apocalypse so we should help everyone. If you try to get people to join, they aren't just going to flock to you. That's how humans get enslaved.

should have read reviews was a great story for 100 chapters, then authors just went fuck it at chapter 100 and reset evrything and started a new story. It's like the author just got tired of the story or had no clue what to do so he just started over.

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.

Excess-- that's the name of the game in this wonderful scifi system romp. I've truely enjoyed macros writing both in it's quality and proliference.

At first the pacing can be a bit difficult to adjust to, as it's a non-stop rush all the way though and covers a lot of time, but I mean this in the best way possible. Reading macros stories is like 100 mgs of epinephrine mainlined into your brain.

On top of all that, the characters are fun and the story isn't afraid of a little levity. Cheers Macro, your writing is awesome.

I really like this story as it contains a lot of the LitRPG elements combined with a main character who is smart and funny. The MC is is relatable and smart while also being unorthodox and cunning. There are only a few stories that have made me actually laugh out loud on this site, but this one has me rolling in laughter.

That all being said I found the story line great until there was a sharp left turn at chapter 100. I won't go into it as others have already commented on it. However, after I kept going the new story arc is growing on me. 

The grammar and punctuation is a bit spotty at times, but nothing too distracting. 

Keep up the good work!

This was a good read(I read to chapter 76),funny with a nice twist on the alian invasion SYSTEM thing tho the 'im a lefty from California thats hates on white poeple' thing was annoying. 

Found it novel and interesting at first. Moves pretty rapidly, discarding some characters pretty readily. Not bad in of itself, but my main issue is with the MC's rapid change in character from smart and pragmatic to somewhat silly and flippant, to just stupid and annoying. He has dumb smart guy syndrome and I feel no sympathy for him.

More planning was needed to maintain a coherent story. Not enough time was spent fleshing out the MC's motivations for some of his frankly stupid decisions. The other characters are still fairly interesting, but they are side characters and do not require the depth of character needed for a MC. Couple that with rapid and large time skips with random seemingly inconsequential foreshadowing and I just stopped enjoying the story. Read up to Ch 32 before calling it quits.

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.