I wonder if it's a - thing with the editor or the agent or something? IIRC he shares one of these with Laurell K Hamilton, and. Uh. Yyyyeah. Similar issues abound (e.g. the were-rats all being latin@/hispanic, genderfail, LGBT-fail).

So maybe it's a thing?

I 'unno. Mostly I'm just going all 'how did this get past--who even says--BUH!?' and trying to make my neurons do something besides Three Stooges routines on the floor.