YMMV / Black Tide Rising

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Some of the tie-in short stories by other authors have produced some characters who some fans like better than the cast from the main novels.
  • Tom Kaminski from "Up on the Roof" (by Eric Flint), for being a major asset to his group (due to his marksmanship skills and how he's the one to come up with the idea of hiding from the zombies on top of empty oil tanks) even though he's confined to a wheelchair.
  • Large Ham warlord Eric Magnus Lamont, "King of Miami and the Kingdom of Florcubatamp," due to being an interesting mixture of ruthlessly competent, hilariously over the top, and, in his second appearance, willing to coexist peacefully with Wolf Squadron.
  • Frank Oberman from the short story "Maligator County" gets a lot of love for his Staking the Loved One backstory and having a pack of well-trained Fluffy the Terrible attack dogs.
  • Combat Pragmatist Cat Cavanaugh, Sergeant Rock Jim Kolar (who reappears in a subsequent short story), and Genius Bruiser Badass Native Rob George from the short story "Chase the Sunset" are praised for being compelling protagonists for a rare zombie apocalypse Canadian Western as they liberate trapped residents of the Canadian prairies from the threat of lingering infected individuals and a serial rapist.
• Squick: Many readers of the main series feel rather grossed out by the occasional sexualization of girls ranging from 12 to 15.The fact that Faith and her sister are based on Ringo's daughters doesn't help.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Strands of Sorrow involves Faith going to Washington to try and find surviving members of the presidential line of succession who outrank the mentally unbalanced Straw Civilian former Secretary of Education. Many fans feel that this had the potential for a whole book (or at least a major subplot). Instead, it's confined to the last few chapters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The cheerleading squad from the short story "Not in Vain" are set up as an Amazon Brigade via Covers Always Lie and the summary on the back of the book, and a lot of fans would have liked their story to live up to that and maybe feature them later on in the franchise's expanding universe. Unfortunately, most of them are just Action Survivors while their coach is the main zombie fighter and, even more unfortunately, most of the girls who get (engaging and promising) backstories and personalities are infected and killed after requesting that their spinal fluid be used to make vaccines for the other kids.
  • In the short story "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Grandpa?", the eponymous character, Andy Thompson, is urged to give up his gun collection prior to the apocalypse by his family (who end up apologizing and asking him for protection once the zombies emerge) and their lawyer Mr. Merritt after the city council complains about the safety risk the weapons pose. Merritt gets along well with Andy during the meeting and mentions having his own gun collection, setting him up as a potential Stronger Than They Look ally once the apocalypse starts. Instead, he's never seen or mentioned again.

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