A Deus Ex Machina or Diabolus Ex Machina is realistic, but it’s also bad storytelling.
However, this is not the same thing as being satisfying to the reader. It is realistic for the enemy to be doing their own thing off-screen where the hero can’t see it. I generally agree with this (with a few caveats). I’ve heard many people say that Methods is realistic. Either way, the slow pace doesn’t tend to be worth it.
Sometimes it’s the sort of foreshadowing that’s only obvious in retrospect. Sometimes these are interesting, and sometimes they aren’t, with the difference often being how much you care about the topic in question. There are numerous references, cameos for fans, and lengthy digressions into esoteric subjects. He’s often right, but the price of that is that the plot moves much more slowly than it otherwise would, and sometimes the conclusion of a chapter leaves me scratching my head asking myself whether anything meaningful had actually happened. There are quite a few digressions which exist not to teach a lesson or advance plot or characterization, but because the author thought it would be interesting. Not all of that is due to the parts which might have been lifted straight from Yudkowsky’s Sequences. There are relatively few plot points in the six hundred and sixty thousand words, especially when compared to canon – Methods covers Harry’s first year in the same number of words that the canon books cover Harry’s first four (almost five) years. For every major event that happens, there are thousands of words expended on showing the reaction from every angle.
There are far too many reactions and aftermaths. The pacing problems of Methods are pretty easy to see just by looking at the chapter titles.
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