A Review of John Enright's Unholy Quest

Among the new offerings of Objectivist fiction is John Enright's action/adventure novel, Unholy Quest, a story of a modern mercenary who lives by a code of honor essential to his self-esteem, his designs at avenging a terrible wrong that had been dealt him by his former colleagues, a religious cult into association with which he is drawn and which seeks to subvert his purposes in favor of its own, and a woman who pursues his attention and becomes mortally endangered in the process. Enright's book is an interesting read, and exhibits abundant mastery of literary structure and intellectual insight. Nevertheless, there also exist certain decisions on his part that I would call into question.

As this is a work of fiction, and the atmosphere of sequential discovery created via its plot is one of its more enticing elements, I shall avoid an extensive elaboration on the plot here, other than to state that it is coherent, integrated, dynamic, and filled with danger and suspense. The life of the protagonist, Thor Johnson, often hangs by a thread, and he is imperiled by the many grotesque possibilities of death that claim most of the lesser characters of the story. His survival is grounded in his autonomy and unwillingness to blindly place his trust in others, his innovative use of the tools of his trade, as well as his immense foresight in planning. The dogs Thor spends an extensive amount of time training at the beginning of the book prove invaluable to him later on; in a similar manner, Enright uses details with clear intentions and consequences, and, while not overwhelming the reader with them, applies well Ayn Rand's dictum that not one of them ought to be accidental.