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?

Welcome to our final discussion of Five Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin!

Today's discussion covers the entire book, so spoilers will not be marked. I'll start us off with some prompts, but also feel free to add your own.

Five Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin

>Set in the same universe as Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, these five linked Hainish stories follow far-future human colonies living in the distant solar system

>Here for the first time is the complete suite of five linked stories from Ursula K. Le Guin’s acclaimed Hainish series, which tells the history of the Ekumen, the galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain. First published as Four Ways to Forgiveness, and now joined by a fifth story, Five Ways to Forgiveness focuses on the twin planets Werel and Yeowe—two worlds whose peoples, long known as “owners” and “assets,” together face an uncertain future after civil war and revolution.

>In “Betrayals” a retired science teacher must make peace with her new neighbor, a disgraced revolutionary leader. In “Forgiveness Day,” a female official from the Ekumen arrives to survey the situation on Werel and struggles against its rigidly patriarchal culture. Embedded within “A Man of the People,” which describes the coming of age of Havzhiva, an Ekumen ambassador to Yeowe, is Le Guin’s most sustained description of the Ur-planet Hain. “A Woman’s Liberation” is the remarkable narrative of Rakam, born an asset on Werel, who must twice escape from slavery to freedom. Joined to them is “Old Music and the Slave Women,” in which the charismatic Hainish embassy worker, who appears in two of the four original stories, returns for a tale of his own. Of this capstone tale Le Guin has written, “the character called Old Music began to tell me a fifth tale about the latter days of the civil war . . . I’m glad to see it joined to the others at last.”

Bingo squares: Book Club (HM if you join us!), Five Short Stories (HM), Older Protagonist (HM), Politics and Court Intrigue

What is the FIF Book Club? See our reboot thread here.

What's next?

Our May read is The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis. Midway discussion May 13, final May 27.
Our June read is Starless by Jacqueline Carey. Midway discussion June 10, final June 24.

u/Merle8888

Five Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin