Harry -- and the book -- were wound so tightly! [...] It feels like post-high school Buffy to me -- everything is becoming all too frighteningly real. The pacing is different, the rhythm is different, the characters are more afraid and desperate.

I had the same reaction. The evil in this series was at first pretty reliably contained within the "magical atmosphere" aspect of the stories, while in this book it takes a big step into the "central character interactions" realm of the plot.

*