I've seen a lot of people talking about trilogies/duologies and I had a thought while I was reading part two of a trilogy last night.

Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series is a great one for looking at trilogies. While it's a long reaching series, the individual books itself are actually written as trilogies. Series List  . You'll have to scroll down for a bit.

From reading the books (over the years) (what I can remember), she introduces the characters and the conflict (book 1), ramps up the action and introduces the main conflict (book 2), and then solves the problem (book 3).

Looks like there's a few that have more than trilogies listed (the omnibuses should not be counted since they're the books before combined) and the newest ones are not listed, but you get the idea.



For duologies, I would suggest Beth Cato's Clockwork Dagger series  . Although she's writing novellas in the series, the actual series consists of two books. In book one, the readers are introduced to the main characters and the main conflict. (There is another smaller interior conflict for the first book.) Then in the second book, the main conflict is solved, along with another smaller conflict.

I hope that helps someone. I know no one has time to read an entire series right now, but I thought it might help.

(Also the original Star Wars is a great one if you have time just to sit down and watch something. That's a trilogy also!)