Dammit, most everything I wanted to suggest has been suggested already.
Still, more support for these wont hurt.
Read Feist's first 3 Riftwar books (Magician, Silverthorn and Darkness at Sethanon) and the 3 he co-wrote with Janny Wurts (Daughter-, Servant-, and Mistress of the Empire). Magician in particular is a seminal fantasy work, and the others are all solid. The stuff later on just gets tedious ("Oh look, the last big bad was actually just running from this bigger bad", repeated ad nauseum), although at least the bits with Nakor are good fun.
For Wheel Of Time, ignore the haters. The problem with the series is that it was written with an end goal in mind; book 1, and to a lesser extent, 2 are fairly self-contained, but after that it becomes more about laying the groundwork for the end. Yes, it slows down for a couple of books either side of 7, but book 10 starts to pick up, 11 is a really good read and then (as Sanderson takes over) the books are in climax mode, and basically consist of one long string of badassitude.
Also, they're good THICK books; I don't know about you, but I read fast. I usually get 2-3 hours from most books out there (Pratchett's stuff is about 2.5 hours pretty consistently for me, as an idea), so getting 12 hours of solid reading from a WoT book is a nice change.
Mentioning Sanderson, he is a truly amazing author. I'd love him just for the fact that he manages to avoid or subvert virtually all the tired old fantasy cliches, but he ties that in with solid writing, believable characters, dialogue and settings, as well as truly well thought out magic systems. Elantris is one of his first, and a good place to start reading, but he truly gets into form by the Mistborn trilogy. Finally, the Way of Kings series is planned to be a WoT sized epic, and that first book is the best I've ever read, by any author ever.
Robin Hobb's stuff is generally pretty good, except for the Soldier Son trilogy, a stand alone series with no connection to her other stuff. While that story was generally meh, her Royal Assassin series is good, if somewhat dark. The next series in 'verse (Liveship series) is about level, although the main characters aren't as badass as the one from the 1st trilogy. Then it switches back to said hero, and it's awesome. Finally, she's currently writing a new series in the verse a bit further on. So far it's good, but it feels a bit different, though I can't put my finger on why.
Read Patrick Rothfuss' books; Name if the Wind and A Wise Man's Fears. While Way of Kings is my number one book, these two take second and third. It tells the story of Kvothe, a true ace in every way; the man should be a total Mary Sue (Gary Stu?), right down to the colour changing eyes. It speaks volumes for this author that he can actually make that sort of character not only bearable, but downright awesome. It's also his 1st and 2nd book ever, so a truly impressive debut performance.
Pratchett is a given; I'm actually surprised he's only cropped up relatively lightly in this thread. Good balance of humour and drama, and extremely prolific. A good place to start is the city watch stuff ("Guards! Guards!"; it's around the point where he started to get the Discworld verse properly defined).
Eddings is okay, but is extremely stereotypical sword and sorcery type high fantasy, and the stories tend to get pretty repetitive quickly. That said, the Redemption of Athalus, and Belgarath the Sorceror are both excellent books, that can be read on their own (BtS is actually a prequel to his earlier series the Belgariad and the Mallorean, while RoA is completely standalone).
Heading off the beaten track, David Farland is another good author. Good, solid high fantasy series with 7 or 8 books so far, still going strong, and (with the exception of the first 2 books) are quite short and digestible. Well thought out magic system, and generally solid setting. There are some problems though. He definitely leans towards the overly descriptive prose at the start; in the first book in particular, every fricking scene seems to start with a detailed discription of each character's outfit.
Secondly, and I think this might stem from him being a pastor IRL, his main characters seem to draw heavily from the Jesus archetype; very much the self sacrificing hero. Not a bad thing, but it does feel a little weird at times.
Other than that, nothing really leaps out at me. Oh, and avoid Marcus Heitz and Ian Irvine like the plague. Their books are horrible, and I regret every cent I gave them.
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Topic: Yet another book thread (Read 7668 times)