Review of Mary Buckham's "Invisible Prison"

Today, I have the pleasure of reviewing Mary Buckham's novella, "Invisible Prison".

INVISIBLE PRISON, the Alex Noziak Novella that starts off the Invisible Recruit series is now available!

Magic is the last gift Alex Noziak wants but she must embrace it to gain her freedom. Alex Noziak, part-witch, part-shaman is dumped into the middle of four hostile non-human females and expected to train with them as a team to protect humans from preternatural threats. Prison never looked so good in comparison.

 Worldbuilding: As the market is saturated with pretty much every single different type of world or the idea has already been done, Miss Buckham found a way of putting a unique spin on the world. In Invisible Prison, the paranormal beings hide their abilities and powers from those of the humans. There are witches, vampires, shifters, psychics, people that disappear and pretty much any variation that you can think of with paranormal characters. In this story, the government is putting together a task force of paranormals with different powers to protect the humans and their own from other paranormals. This worldbuilding was wonderfully well-thought out and done.

Characters: The heroine is Alex Noziak, a witch that has been dumped in jail after using her magic to save her shape shifting brother and incidentally causing the death of another shape shifter. Instead of blowing the whistle on the paranormal world, she eats her secret and goes to jail where she doesn't make friends and nearly winds up dead. Alex is a spunky, tough, sarcastic character that does show sympathy and empathy for the underdog. I loved the tone and spunk of her voice. The secondary characters are also a nice background to uncover more of the worldbuilding and Alex. I especially loved Vaughn Munro and her princess-type, but tough as nails personality. There are lots of great story options for future books involving other point-of-views if Miss Buckham opts to go that direction.

Pros & Cons: This was only a teaser, just a novella to get readers interested in the series to get into Book One, Invisible Magic Book. It was a fast and very entertaining read with high stakes and just generally great writing. Pros, are pretty much everything. I loved the book and will definitely be picking up the next in the series. As for cons, I can't really think of anything. Everything was great, although me being a romance junkie, I missed the romance thread. The story is Urban Fantasy, so romance wasn't involved, but still a great read.

Fresh Factor: The concept was very fresh and very interesting. Miss Buckham uses the standard paranormals - vampires, witches, shifters, but also creates some of her own paranormal variety, people that can disappear. She also added a negative when the powers were used, which I liked and made it more realistic.

Overall: Overall, I loved this book and it has whet my appetite to read the next book, a full-length story to get more of Alex Noziak and the gang. I would give this story five stars *****. It has everything that a UF has to offer with a lot of grit and punch. I would recommend this story to anyone and pick up the first book.

INVISIBLE MAGIC BOOK ONE: ALEX NOZIAK

She has nothing to lose, except her life.
Hidden from a world unaware of magic, a recently and only partially trained group of operatives known as the Invisible Recruits are the only ones willing to stand between mankind and those powerful preternatural factions seeking to change the balance of power and gain world domination.
To save the innocent, Alex must call upon her untested abilities, but at what cost?


Thanks for reading and please, if you have a book to recommend, let me know as my Kindle is always looking for more stories!

R.J.