Peter F. Hamilton wraps up the Commonwealth and Void series (I think!)

I just finished a very enjoyable duology of Peter F. Hamilton's:

You'll need to have read at least three Hamilton's previous novels to really appreciate these two:

Pandora's Star
Judas Unchained

and at least one of the Void series:

The Dreaming Void
The Temporal Void
The Evolutionary Void

These books concern Bienvenido, another world in the Void that is not Querencia, the one described in the Void trilogy. It was also settled by captain and crew of a Commonwealth ship that was captured by the Void and devolved politically where the Captain and his successors hold most political power.

Abyss opens with a colony ship being captured by the Void when it was cruising well outside the Void on its way to another galaxy. Instead it finds itself near these structures that resemble trees and decide to investigate ...

That's when we encounter the Fallers, a monstrous species that entices humans (and others) close enough to its "eggs" to capture and "subsume" them ...

Nigel Sheldon's clone arrives in the second part of the book and "marries" Kyssandra, the young woman living on a farm near where Nigel's spaceship lands. She's just supposed to be sold into an arranged marriage with a local thug to pay her mother's debts but resists and wakes up from a drugged stupor at the altar not with the young thug ... but with Nigel! "Say yes," he says ...

Nigel runs rings around Bienvenido's powerful, engineering a political revolution and finally getting enough raw materials together to get his spaceship launched ... and to figure out what happened to the colony ship that was captured and to bring as much resolution as possible to that situation ...

Night continues the story ... if you finish Abyss and enjoy it, trust me and try this one. I found it one of the more satisfying stories I've experienced in years! Five stars!

3-6% (almost) risk free return?!

I went to see a presentation last night by this guy who bills himself as Leverage Planners:

I was curious about the word leverage, as to me it means "trading with borrowed money."

The presentation started with an area that I'm familiar with from watching TastyTrade, the crazy and often hidden fees in many investment vehicles like mutual funds. I appreciated this, as well as the discussion of the standard pitch that most advisers give ("stock market always goes up over the long term; diversify with bonds as you age") and how this doesn't apply right now as the stock market it back up near its record high and the bond market is high also but under pressure from incipient interest rate increases.

 The main pitch was for fixed annuity products that are supposed to return 3-6% per year on average, sometimes more (capped around 15%) but which cannot lose money.   The investment isn't in the market, but instead is essentially lent to an insurance company. These companies have large capital requirements and the money has to come from somewhere ... this is one way they do it.

It certainly looks worth a look for anybody who's risk-averse with at least a 10-year time horizon. (I still think I can do better trading futures and options; we'll see!)

This company is local to the Seattle area; if you're elsewhere (hi Lucy!) you want to look for a financial planner who's a fiduciary, meaning he or she will be acting in your interest as first priority.

Basic your risks are two:

• The insurance company could go out of business
• You could need a big chunk of the money sooner than you think

The first one you can handle by dealing with only A rated companies, which your planner should be able to help you find. The second you deal with by only investing money you're sure you won't need for the 10-year period the money will be tied up. (You can take 10% out per year with no penalty in the plans the guy showed us last night.)

I hope this works for you, risk-averse friends!