I'll admit I'm quite anxious for Children of Strife. Children of Time is an all-time favorite, but each subsequent book in the series was a bit of a disappointment. Fingers crossed this one turns the tide
I liked shroud a lot, but the ending felt very ungratifying. It's like Tchaikovsky wrote himself into a corner and didn't really know how to wrap it up nicely. I find this to be true of some of his other books as well.
A counter example to this is that I asked it about NovaMin® 5 minutes ago and it essentially told me to not bother and buy whatever toothpaste has >1450 ppm fluoride.
No, your actual gain in capital would not be taxed. The only thing that is being taxed is the "fictitious" gain on the monetary value of your capital at a certain date (peildatum).
Everyone agrees that this system is dumb as shit, but our tax department is too incompetent to implement a sane capital gain tax like they have in, for example. Australia.
The one I know of (IMC trading) does a lot of low level stuff like this and is currently hiring.