The Terminal List Series Review

Author: Jack Carr
Genre: Political Thriller / Military Thriller
Series: James Reece Series
Published: 2018–Present
Rating: ★★★★★

Sometimes you go looking for your next book.

And sometimes you accidentally discover an entire series you didn’t even know existed.

Early in my reading journey, I wandered into Barnes & Noble one morning looking for my next adventure. At that point, I had read Verity by Colleen Hoover and Chasing Jesus by Dr. Ron Charles, so clearly I had established absolutely no genre consistency whatsoever.

While browsing the mystery and thriller section, I spotted The Terminal List by Jack Carr.

I stopped.

I had watched The Terminal List series on Prime Video and absolutely loved it. What I somehow hadn’t realized was that the show was based on a book.

Then I looked beside it.

There were MORE.

James Reece’s story wasn’t over.

Well, obviously I needed to know what happened next.

Since I had already watched the television adaptation of The Terminal List, I did something I would normally never recommend and skipped straight to book two, True Believer.

I was instantly hooked.

For anyone unfamiliar with the series, The Terminal List introduces James Reece, a Navy SEAL whose team is ambushed during a combat deployment. When tragedy follows him home, Reece begins uncovering evidence that what happened wasn’t simply an act of war—and that something much larger may be happening within his own government.

And when everything has been taken from him?

James Reece starts making a list.

That’s about as far as I’m taking you because this is one series I absolutely do not want to spoil.

What I will tell you is that every book I read afterward pulled me deeper into Reece’s world.

Part of what makes these books so fascinating is the background Jack Carr brings to them. Carr himself spent twenty years in Naval Special Warfare, and that experience gives these stories a level of detail that sometimes made me forget I was reading fiction. Carr has described drawing on the experience and emotions of real-world combat when writing his novels.

And then there are the redactions.

Yes. Actual blacked-out sections in the books.

Because of the security clearances Carr held during his military career, he submitted his work to the Department of Defense for prepublication review. When portions were redacted, Carr chose to leave those sections blacked out in the published novels.

You cannot put something like that in front of me and expect me NOT to wonder what was under the black box.

That sense of realism follows the entire series.

There were so many moments when I would stop and think:

Could this actually happen?

And sometimes the uncomfortable answer felt like…

Yeah. I could see it.

These books deal with warfare, intelligence, geopolitics, terrorism, technology, government, and threats that don’t always feel very far removed from the world outside the page. Obviously these are fictional thrillers, but Carr grounds them in enough reality that sometimes they made me want to disconnect from society entirely and go live in a cabin in the woods.

Other times they made me think perhaps I should take a survival course.

And apparently at one point I was prepared to relocate to South Africa and fight poachers.

Jack Carr had me making PLANS.

I will give readers one warning, though: Carr knows his weapons.

Like…KNOWS his weapons.

Firearms, military equipment, gear, tactics—there were moments when the technical detail went completely over my head because I came into these books knowing essentially nothing about any of it.

But strangely, I ended up enjoying that too.

If you’re already knowledgeable about military equipment and weaponry, I imagine you’ll appreciate the specificity. If you’re like me and know absolutely nothing, prepare to accidentally learn quite a bit along the way.

And after following James Reece through book after book, I can safely say that stumbling across The Terminal List in that bookstore was one of my better accidental discoveries.

These books introduced me to a genre I hadn’t even realized I would love.

They’re intense. They’re detailed. They’re sometimes unsettlingly believable. And they continually left me wanting to know where James Reece was going next.

And thankfully, we’re not finished yet.

The eighth James Reece novel, State of Exile, is coming in 2027. And for anyone who discovered Reece through the television adaptation like I did, Season 2 of The Terminal List is based on True Believer and premieres on Prime Video October 21, 2026.

So basically…

I picked an excellent time to finally write this review.

If you’ve read any of the James Reece books, I would love to know what you thought. Tell me which one was your favorite—or whether the series sent you down your own survival-training/cabin-in-the-woods rabbit hole—in the comments below.

Storykeeper’s Verdict: A Story Worth Keeping.

-Chelsea

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