Line #3 YMMV/HaloTheFlood


1	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Marvin Mobuto. He's a posthumous character that was Guilty Sparks' first attempt to get a Reclaimer through the Library, but he failed and died. What makes him so remarkable was that he got quite a ways into the Library, despite being a BadassNormal with no power suit, special training, or SPARTAN-II upgrades. H's stuck with fans, and more than one fan story has referenced his feats.
2	* HilariousInHindsight: Zuka's attitudes of doing what it takes to win, disobeying orders to accomplish goals, and musing that being a ProudWarriorRaceGuy is less than what his race can become sound really strange to those who know about what the Sangheli would evolve into... except that the 10th anniversary edition of Halo 2 had cut scenes that specifically show that Sangheli would occasionally produce powerful warriors that would defy the status quo and question things, and that these warriors would be made into Arbiters to make sure the rest of the race stays in line. Zuka accidentally pre-dated a real plot point!
3	* MemeticLoser: Zuka 'Zamamee is the butt of a lot of jokes among ''Halo'' fans, mostly for his repeated failure to assassinate the Chief and for ultimately being killed in a combat encounter that most ''Combat Evolved'' players would've completed in a few seconds using a Rocket Launcher.
4	* {{Misblamed}}: Dietz is given a lot of stick for writing what most consider to be one of the weaker ''Halo'' novels. One of the major complaints is that a majority of the book is just a rather dry retread of the game; however, Dietz had little choice over this matter and the far-better received subplots about the Marines and Covenant were only added at his insistence. He also had a mere ''ten weeks'' to write the whole thing. Granted, most of the subplots aren't particularly great either, but it's very easy to manage another author getting their hands on it and crapping out a boring prose version of the game. It's certainly nothing like the ''Literature/MassEffectDeception'' fiasco.
5	* OneSceneWonder: Sgt. Marvin Mobuto appears only briefly (and is [[PosthumousCharacter already dead]] when he does), but just him being a normal Marine who managed to fight his way through most of the Flood-infected Library was enough to make him one of the book's more memorable characters.
6	* SoOKItsAverage: This has remained the general consensus from the very day the book was released; while few ''Halo'' fans regard it as bad enough to be considered as one of the worst video game tie-in novels of all time, it ''is'' widely considered to be the worst of the ''Halo'' novels released during the original Bungie trilogy's run, to the point where it is the only early ''Halo'' book that is ''not'' universally regarded as a foundational text of ''Halo'''s expanded universe. Even attempts to reassess ''The Flood''[='s=] reputation have been somewhat stymied by the fact that Dietz would go on to write what ''is'' generally considered [[Literature/MassEffectDeception one of the worst video game tie-in novels of all time]].
7	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: The general consensus is that this book introduces some good ideas to the ''Halo'' canon (this book was our fist look at Lekgolo society, as well as the first to look at the Human-Covenant War from the perspective of both the Covenant and the fan-favourite ODST's), but it also has to deal with the distraction of being a rote retelling of ''Combat Evolved''. A very commonly cited 'fix' for this book is to cut out the ''Combat Evolved'' parts and treat it more as an anthology of various stories during the Battle of Installation 04.
8	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: It's hard to get invested in ODST's story when you know they're DoomedByCanon whatever happens.

Context YMMV / HaloTheFlood