Review: Slowly, slowly the tension builds
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 31, 2012
Wightman's "Selection Event" kind of snuck up on me.  I was worried initially - protaganist Martin Lake was coming across as one of those anti heroes in the vein of Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant, a character I found immensely frustrating.But as the end of the world drew nigh, Lake stepped up in an unassuming and very believable way.In its own subtle way, this is a story of morals and their impact on relationships, with the exceptional circumstances of an extinction event as the driving force to percolate feelings and thinking to the fore.It also exhibits a certain naiviety that is gently eroded by events and necessity, but like an L.E. Modesitt Jr. story the 'how' of this is what drags you in and snags your mind in unexpected ways.  There is a wonderful cast of supporting characters to reflect and refract what is a dramatically changing world.  And by keeping the geographical zone pretty tight - apart from the wonderfully written Diaz who roams a post-apocalyptic America at high speed on assorted motorbikes, riding the hghs and lows of both the tarmac and his bipolar disorder - the implications and complications of nature reasserting her authority on the earth do not distract from the plotting and pacing."Selection Event" slowly builds the tension, is interesting, does not shirk from the hard questions, and how the final chapters play out is entirely satisfying, no easy task at the end of the world.