Two questions regarding authors
1)Every so often when it gets slow and I run out of sites that are probably okay to be looking at on desk, I remember that I keep meaning to start reading the Dresden Files. For some reason this branch can't keep Storm Front in. Whenever I check, there's like six holds on it. Meanwhile the second, fourth, and eighth books in the series are right there on the shelf ten yards away. Does it matter terribly much in which order I read them?

2) I just reread Dave Duncan's Great Game trilogy after giving up on it as a teenager. It was a decent read, but also contained a whole lot of OH JOHN RINGO NO-style treatment of women and minorities. I'm looking at an old Library Journal that has a review of a novel of his about alchemists in an alternate Renaissance Venice. They say it's pretty good and I have a secret weakness for fantasy Venice. On the other hand, I'll pass if it's full of the same creepy "Hooray white people! British colonial-style oppression of native peoples is awesome!" and "Rape bad! But interesting! But bad!" moments that those were. Anybody read much Duncan? Does he commonly throw those sort of icky scenes and attitudes into his stories?