Review: The Terminal List

The Terminal List by Jack Carr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Something just kept pulling me out of the story...

I think it’s fair to preface my 3 star review of Jack Carr’s debut novel “The Terminal List,” by revealing I read almost exclusively, millitary/spy thrillers and shooters. Because of this I think The Terminal List starts off at a small disadvantage, being that there are very few, if any, plot lines yet to be explored in this realm. I can’t say I was ever bored with the story, but from the start had a feeling of “this again?” A reaction I unfortunately had to more than one aspect of the plot.

Navy SEAL commander James Reece finds himself overwhelmed with guilt, responsible for leading his men into an ambush that resulted in the worst loss of special forces operators in U.S history. As he and us the reader later discover, the mission was a setup and meant to fail. Being the hardened SEAL commander he is, he finds little resolve in this and sets out for bloody revenge. This is where my “this again” feelings began. Unfortunately for Jack Carr, not only had I read the novel (which I do not wish to share the title of a closely competing author in a review of Mr. Carr’s work) that shares an almost identical beginning to The Terminal List, but I JUST read it. While I wish no negative impression on Carr’s writing, the competing novel in my opinion had done a much more compelling job with the plot.

Thankfully The Terminal List veers off in a new direction after the loss of his team in comparison to the novel I just mentioned. Unfortunately the new road again bares striking resemblence to another story, and in this case a popular new TV series with a well established character “The Punisher.” With that I must admit some level of dissapointment with the story, nothing was new for me. As I mentioned I am an avid reader in this subject and enjoy the “shop talk” and military slang, however with The Terminal List I think some areas went too deep. Weapons/millitary info and slang was well beyond civilian interest level and I dare say beyond what readers of this subject prefer? Disclosure I am not prior millitary, but at times there are full paragraphs describing a weapon that’s not all that important to the coming action, I imagine most felt this was a bit heavy.

I also had trouble with the pace. There were some HUGE moments for the character described within a sentance or two, where I would have prefered a much more intense and detailed description. Similar with emotional circumstances, not that I wanted to see James suffer more, I just felt his lack of suffering a bit unbelievable despite his hardened SEAL blood. Little things like flirting with a female friend within days of his wife and daugher being brutally murdered? Casually prepping for his next shoot out in the very room his family was slaughtered in? Now there are inclusions of emotional stress at points like these, but they fell real short for me. Again I refer back to The Punisher, that dude straight lost his mind and went on a rampage. James Reece takes the same loss and goes on more of a “pew pew shoot out.” To his credit, Reece does take some VERY violent retaliation, of which I enjoyed not in a weirdo way but because it finally gave me some good reflection of how bad he’s hurting inside.

Lastly, the dialog and personality of Reece and his other SEAL’s. It just missed for me, CLEARLY Jack Carr knows way more about this world than civilian me, but my comparison is to other millitary shooters which are also written by former Delta/SEAL men. It had a feeling of forced presentation to me, like the written form of over-acting if that makes sense? I was actually surprised to discover Carr was indeed a SEAL, I found this out about halfway through the book and admit it made me read on with more respect and open mind. This was complimented by the fact the last 1/3 of the story is it’s best aspect. When James Reece finally gets to start throwing lead and getting revenge, the action sequences, while still subpar to similars in my opinion, are very enjoyable and do carry some mental fist pounding moments..

So my overall opinion is “Good” not “Great.” Having lacking in originality and struggling to find it’s pace, The Terminal List feels to move too fast and jump over critical moments without pause. I’m left with the impression debut author Jack Carr had a lot to fit into one book and may have done well to either leave some chunks out, or split this into a future James Reece #2.

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