Of Swords and Parasols

Last week I finished the House of Nightooks I mentioned a while back.  On the upside, it did eventually develop a plot beyond "Zoey is superspecial and has 10 love interests who range from creepy to user to total jerk" (it's telling when the love interetst you object to the least is the one she literally made out with 5 minutes after seeing him try to rape a classmate.  Actually, the love interest I object to the least is Darius, but he is rightly all about Aphrodite, and I was happyt to have a secondary pairing I liked.) and women develop the ability to speak to and about each other without constant threats and slutshaming.

On the flipside, we start hearing about how men rape/try to rape because they're CONFUSED and start having men doing evil things (rape, murder, enslavement) because women forced them to/rejected them/influenced them/clouded men's judgement with their evil vaginas.  Oh, and we switched from one POV to multiple POVs, half of which were men who have raped, murdered, attempted to rape, etc.
 

Oh yes, and apparently, if your wie of 100+ years is murdered, there is something deeply wrong with your character if you don't want to hold her killer's hand at the campfire and sing kumbaiya with him a few weeks later.

Meanwhile, I've started reading Alyson Noel's Immortals series (Stop judging me.  i don't even like this genre, I just can't seem to stop) which is about vampire-like immortals who aren't vampires.  Noel clearly had Twilight open while she was writing Ever and Damen's courtship, because Ever is Bella with past trauma and psychic powers and Damen is Edward with social skills, and some scenes feel lifted right out of Twilight.

Which brings us to the title.  Damen is at least 500 years old, maybe older.  He is so good at keeping a low profile that he has used the same name the whole titme, as eveidences by a GALLERY of paintings of him by famous masters with his name for the titles and numerous classics made out to him.  Ok, well, names repeat themselves.  Though not really among the casual acquaintances and close confidants of every famous person in 500 years.  But then he goes and tells his classmates how, in 17 years, he's lived in about 10 countries enough to be intimately familiar with their culture and has mastered all the arts.
 

But that's not the kicker.

The kicker is that, after 500 years of miraculously being undiscovered he becomes an underwear model.