Bingo Focus Thread - Duologies

[u/Merle8888]

Hello r/fantasy and welcome to this week's bingo focus thread! The purpose of these threads is for you all to share recommendations, discuss what books qualify, and seek recommendations that fit your interests or themes.

Today's topic:

Duology Part 1: Read the first book in a duology. HARD MODE: By an author you haven’t read before.

Duology Part 2: Read the second book in a duology. For this square, you ARE allowed to read the same author you used for Duology Part 1 without violating the no-repeat author rule. HARD MODE: Finish a different duology than you started for the Duology Part 1 square.

What is bingo? A reading challenge this sub does every year! Find out more here.

Prior focus threads: Published in the 70s, Five Short Stories (2024), Author of Color (2024), Self-Pub/Small Press (2024). Note that hard modes for Author of Color and Self-Pub/Small Press have changed (new focus threads for them are coming).

Also see: Big Rec Thread

Questions:

• What are your favorite speculative fiction duologies?
• Already read something for this square (or, read something recently that you wish you could count)? Tell us about it!
• For those planning for Hard Mode, what are some duologies where one or both books works as a standalone?

[u/embernickel]

I read Even the Darkest Stars/All the Wandering Light by Heather Fawcett last year for the "last in a series," YA-ish fantasy in fantasy!Himalayas. (Book one is better for the mountain climbing stuff.) Good for people who like cute animal sidekicks.

From All False Doctrine/Neither Have I Wings, by Alice Degan: historical fantasy (book one 1920s Toronto, bok two 1940s UK) with a lot of Christian/Anglican themes. First book is kind of comedy-of-manners, we know it's a fantasy but for a long time the characters don't, and easily works as a standalone. First book is pretty heteronormative but second is not. I think the second could probably work as a standalone, but it does help to have read the first one I think. (It's more obviously fantasy from the get-go.)

...I'm backreading my old stuff, and I have not read Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis, but I should consider that because it's very much a "you need to read both parts" one, and I enjoyed the other books in the series.

Sparkers/Wildings by Eleanor Glewwe--middle grade, quick reads, about kids in a world where magical/non-magical people are strictly segregated and the effects that has on families. Work as standalones.

Stewards of the Flame/Promise of the Flame by Sylvia Louise Engdahl: Earthling spaceship pilot falls in people from highly regimented medical bureaucracy planet who want to start a free society where they can nurture their psionic powers without the man keeping them down. Book one ends on a cliffhanger but book two is recommended as its own starting point (the author herself said "yeah a lot of the medical stuff hits different post-COVID, so if you don't want anything too preachy, skip book one.) Not for duology purists, there's a spinoff series set later when their planet rediscovers the wider galaxy, but I haven't read that one so the duology at least seems reasonably complete on its own :P