Started this book when it was Forgiving Ararat, a self published work, then finished it under its current title on audio book, hoping it was going to be great. As it turned out, Brek Cutler did not carry her weight as an interesting protagonist and narrator. A subplot, the life of the woman whose father designed the gas chambers for the Nazis, was far more interesting and less contrived. Buy the premise, buy the flick, the old movie reviews used to say. This premise of The Lovely Bones meets Noah's Ark just didn't work for me. .. maybe it was the heavy handed treatment of religious themes. ( )

This allegory opens with Brek Cuttler having arrived in Shemaya, a place where the deceased learn to give up the life they once led before entering Heaven. The young attorney, also a wife and mother of an infant, discovers that she is covered with blood as the result of the bullet holes and no memory of what happened. After a period of adjustment in familiar surroundings of her own creation, she learns that she is to join an elite group of attorneys who prosecute and defend souls at the Final Judgment. Initially, she has to learn how to tap into the memories of those she will be defending without losing herself. An advocate for justice, she is alarmed that judgment is being rendered before all life evidence is presented. As she begins to hear each case, she discovers relationships between them, which leads her to the discovery of the situation surrounding her own death.

If you were a fan of The Shack, you will enjoy this novel written by an attorney who focuses on law and spirituality. I thought The Shack was burdened down by the theology that it attempted to cram between the covers, a problem that this novel overcame. Essentially, this novel deals with theological concepts of justice and forgiveness in an entertaining and thought-provoking manner.
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I enjoyed this book. I like a book which surprises me with a good plot twist and this one certainly has that. Overall a good read. This is a book which leaves you with the age old question in your mind of "what if?". Does every event in our lives have an affect on what hapens in the after life? You may find some answers to that question here. This book is very well written and flows smoothly. I look forward to reading more from James P. Kimmel Jr. Well done!!!] ( )

I wasn't sure I'd like this book with the afterlife setting and surreal elements. But it ended up as a favorite. I enjoyed the historic facts and the way the characters lives intersected and/or were affected by the others. It really made me consider my beliefs on "justice" and "forgiveness" and how a person could be both "good" and "evil" and how one persons actions impact someone else's life/personality. Would recommend it to fans of "The Shack". ( )

I think what finally caused me to pick up Kimmel’s The Trial of Fallen Angels was my belief in the potential relevance of books that grab my attention by mystical means—the book that drops on my head in a book store or falls from a library shelf to land at my feet, or in this case, arrives as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer book that I don’t remember requesting. I did not have great expectations for The Trial of Fallen Angels. The premise of souls arriving in heaven to face judgment—all the while looking as they did in life—is not unique and a topic that quickly exhausted my interest years ago. I was surprised, then, when the first thing I noticed was the author’s fine writing. Books of this genre so rarely display writing competence, my inner critic noted.

Kimmel's book is part science fiction, part speculative fiction, but mostly parable. The main character (and narrator), Brek Cuttler, is a young attorney who dies in an automobile accident and finds herself in a unique version of heaven, where she is assigned the role of defense attorney for souls scheduled for their Last Judgment. There is no Appeals Court, but many souls return to the Courtroom over and over, presumably until they get it right.

Brek is an idealist, a seeker after Justice with a capital J. Early in the narrative, she is advised, “There is only one question to be answered during the Final Judgment of every human soul, and it is the same question that concerned God before the Great Flood: what does justice demand?” This sets the scene for the primary moral of the story.

Kimmel makes fast and loose with Scripture, including an imaginative re-telling of the Old Testament creation story. But unlike some 1950s bibles, which substitute the editor’s personal beliefs for any legitimate translated version of the text, Kimmel seems to be saying, “Why not look at it this way?” The results are interesting and thought-provoking.

The Trial of Fallen Angels invites us to ruminate any number of weighty philosophical issues. For starters: “You cannot experience that which is Love until you first know that which is Not Love. Therefore must you separate yourself from Love and enter the realm of Fear and Evil.” There’s also the proposition that human beings are co-creators with God and that a violent act inspired by jealousy or fear is a search for justice. Kimmel explores, as well, the roles of justice and forgiveness in shaping our characters and our society, the burden of responsibility for one’s choices, and finally: Is justice just revenge in a nice dress?

For the most part, Kimmel gets it right—not too preachy, a fair amount of page-turning suspense, and an enormous bite of deep thought. The story did not immediately engage me; I was restless for the action to begin. For me, that occurred some 100 pages in, when Nero’s soul is presented to the Court. I was not prepared for such a complex philosophical challenge, and, until late in the book, I remained the victim of my first impression—that The Trial of Angels was a simplistic New-Age imagining of heaven with a transparent moral. The way it revisited my thoughts over the following weeks brought me to the realization that this is the sort of book that will survive many readings, with each reading revealing another layer of meaning. ( )