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The award winning author Jennifer Fales was born in Jacksonville, FL in 1970. She lived in central Florida during her high school and college years and moved to Southern California in 2004. She has worn many professional hats over the decades - in the clothing and automotive industry as well as financials. Her first book,
Reviewed by Maria Victoria Beltran for Readers' Favorite
Ironic, hilarious and informative are three words that immediately came to my mind when I started reading this book. Seraph Contingency is proof of the rich and edgy imagination of its author Jennifer Fales. Truly, who can write a novel with characters like the seraph, the wicked duchess, the violet haired vixen, a witch, an amazing little boy, and many others? The names of these very colorful characters are Anael, Gaap, Deumos, Thomas, Dabber, Anael, Jezebel and Teivel. There's also Ereshkigal, one of the former rulers of hell and Pete, a backsliding saint who now runs a hip bar in purgatory. The story starts when a bored angel escaped from heaven and ended up in, of all places, a dive bar in Purgatory. Meanwhile, a duchess with a not so beautiful past staged an abduction because she wants to have a more interesting wardrobe. A transporter demon then has to be called in and we get to meet a colorful cast of characters whose personalities defy imagination. In short, reading this book is really just like going on a roller coaster ride on an imagination that has seemingly gone completely wild.
The novel may seem like a product of a wild imagination but there is a lot of humor, science, and magic in it too. It climaxed in what is claimed to be the wildest party ever staged in Hell. There is an allusion to the Greek and Sumerian underworld mythology. There is also a healthy dose of jokes on scientific and mathematical principles that will probably give Jennifer Fales the reputation of being the wackiest novelist in town. Behind this story, however, is a social commentary on what is going on in our world today. And the author tells it by using irony, which certainly proved to be a very effective tool. She surprised me with all the humorous coincidences of contradictions in her story. I also have the feeling that many of the words she used in telling her story are meant to give the opposite of their meanings. And there is also a lot of contradictions between what the characters in the novel knows, and what I think as a reader. Lastly, there is irony in that the ending is completely different as to what I was expecting. Ms. Fales tied her story together with irony, and this kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time I read the Seraph Contingency.
