Complete Monster: Lord Raith, aka the White King, is one of the cruelest White Court vampires, as well as one of Harry's most personal enemies. A brutal authoritarian, Raith murders his sons to avoid them becoming a threat to his power, and rapes and feeds off his daughters, reducing them to sex slaves. Feeding off of the feeling of lust from his victims to sustain his power, Raith only stops this when he kills Maragret LeFay—better known as Harry's mother—and she uses her death curse to prevent him from continuing. When Raith's servant Arturo begins operating independently of Raith's porn monopoly, Raith furiously responds by slaughtering Arturo's innocent employees, only stopping to hunt Harry to lift Margert's death curse. Attacking Harry and his half-brother who is Raith's own son, Thomas, Raith tries to kill them both to vanquish any threat to his power. Raith reveals to Harry that he intends to turn his love interest Karrin Murphy into his personal sex slave and later reveals his intent to rape his youngest daughter, Inari, and turn her into yet another mentally-broken slave for himself.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Harry lays out the extent to which motorcycles are excessively dangerous and can get you seriously maimed, if not killed outright. "All that said, riding a motorcycle is fun."
Harsher in Hindsight: Most of Lara's interactions with Thomas become rather bittersweet in hindsight after Peace Talks reveals that she was Promoted to Parent for Thomas when he was young, making her familial love for him even more screwed-up and tragic when she decides that she needs to give him a Mercy Kill to spare him whatever fate their father will give him.
It's hard to tell when exactly Lord Raith crossed this, but the earliest known concrete example is him killing his former lover Margaret LeFay (Harry and Thomas' mother) with an entropy curse.
Harry considers the practitioners who send off the Entropy Curse to have fully crossed it because of the cold murder of Emma. Even though they are women, Harry will no longer care about that fact as they must be stopped at any cost now.
Nightmare Retardant: One of the epithets of He Who Walks Behind is "The Lord of Slowest Terror." It's supposed to be menacing, but instead gives the impression of having difficulty being able to hurt anyone.
The opening scene of the novel, with Harry rescuing puppies from monkey demons; in particular, the first line, "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault" has been called one of the best opening lines in Urban Fantasy.
Tear Jerker: Emma's death, mainly because she was just a nice woman trying to do her job, feed her kids and pay the bills, and she got killed because her murderers thought she was the only woman left on set who was pretty enough to be attractive to Genosa. And she wasn't even his fiancee.
Harry's family dementia theory and talking to Murphy about how she shouldn't take family for granted even if she doesn't always get along with them, something he says he'd love to be able to do but never will be able to do.
Harry's falling-out with Ebenezar. This is the one man on the planet that Harry respects, and from the moment that Harry realizes that McCoy won't meet his gaze out of shame, you can practically see his faith in his old mentor crumbling, including the realization that Ebenezar was supposed to kill Harry if he acted up, not rehabilitate him. It all culminates in Harry throwing Ebenezar out of his apartment and out of his life.
Gets even worse after Changes, where it's revealed that McCoy is his grandfather, and his last remaining family essentially disowned him. Given Eb's guilt over what happened with Maggie, this hurts ten times deeper.
