I forgot that you can actually {nw=time}, and by the time I realized it, I was already too deep and the clock was ticking aloud. Same thing with the pauses. Some scenes are put in sequential, delayed show statements, so there are only 2 alternatives: rely on the readers to not mess up the animations by clicking too quickly, or force the pause. Admittedly, I saw the latter option as better but didn't execute it gracefully. But now that I know how to pull things off, it should be easily fixed and avoided next time.
After reading the reviews, I think the biggest flaw is that after the PoV switch, literally everything is action and lore, full American Gods mode, which is strikingly different from the first part of the story. I did have some plans to add more narrative, but, again, time was the problem. One of the scrapped bits, which I hinted at very subtly, was Mycroft's unintentional involvement in making Cal get some extra money from race betting, and in turn pushed Cal to visit Mikkel at the climax of the first part. Obviously, though, almost nobody noticed that.
It's just so tricky to weave the plot because the idea is that the whole butterfly effect was purely by chance / not intentional. Mycroft was just in the right place and time to notice Mikkel, take pity, and make a simple kind gesture, no ulterior motive, But he was at the horribly worst time when his adversaries noticed that someone was trampling with death's schedule.
And when you said everything felt a bit impersonal, you're right. In fact, I think it should be like that because part one is basically a film roll of what Mycroft saw from Mikkel's thoughts and his possible fate after the meeting. That's one of the reasons why the intro has "Narrator" explicitly tagged as a character.
Could I put some hints before the shift? Maybe. Ultimately I'm just a single person and for now writing is just not my forte, especially a third-person PoV. Maybe if I have a co-writer or something...