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[aenri]

The Witcher series from Andrzej Sapkowski. Sapkowski has great writing style that hastens the flow of books, so at the end you wish he would write more of them.

Pratchett +1

[Avis-Mergulus]

I plus the Pratchett, you might also try Gaiman - or even both, the book being Good Omens.
On an unrelated note, there's Sarah Monette's Virtu series, which is only readable if you don't mind all the characters suffering horrible mental trauma, the protagonist being really fucking catty, and the whole book beginning with with what is basically buttrape. Yes, it's kind of like that all the way, but the crime-noir style narration is really entertaining.

[nenjin]

Riftwar Saga/Midkemia - This is a good series. It is written at around the 7th to 8th grade level, meaning it's young adult fiction for the most part. The series really comes into its own about Book 3 or 4. That's where the best characters, that keep the series going for like the next three books, show up. Somewhere around the Wrath of the Demon King saga, I sort of lost interest.

Earthsea - A great series. Written at somewhere around the high school level. This is non-standard fiction in my mind. There's magic, but it's all handled with a deftness that makes the whole world feel alien, weird, unfamiliar. It's also one of the most inherently depressing fantasy series I've ever read. There's just something very gray about the world and how everything is written. A Wizard of Earthsea was a transformative moment for me, in my consumption of fantasy. It's where I raised the bar on all other fantasy authors.

Belgeriad & The Mallorean - See above. It's true. It's a very cliche story. But it's pretty robustly written. The reason I don't call this a "good" series is because Eddings has a particular way of writing. All his characters sound the same. All his women are frosty, pushy. (Great for the beginning of the series, what makes them seem like strong women. What it becomes later on is a punch line for the end of every paragraph.) What's most problematic is the same style persists across multiple series. Compare Aunt Pol and Sephrina (however you spell it.) Taken out of context, his women (and many of his men) are hard to tell apart in terms of the personalities.

The Black Company - Just started reading this last year. A good series. Refreshingly non-heroic in all the right ways. Loses a couple points in my book due to the way Cook handles narrative flow. Everything is coming from a narrator recounting everything in the past tense, so you get it all from his perspective and by necessity, he glosses over a lot of stuff in the story, in the name of the narrative trope. The narrator knows things you don't and they don't bother to explain them to you, the reader. A name is referenced, an emotion is attached to it and the rest is assumed. Still, good ideas which aren't horribly overwritten. In fact, I'd say that's the stand out thing about Black Company: its brevity. It manages to say and do cool things without making an entire chapter out of it, something a lot of fantasy authors are guilty of. He keeps it to the point, almost to the point of writing brusquely. The series is a fast and engaging read because of it.

Elric of Melnibone - An older series, circa the 80s. Dark, adult (as seems to be the trend in 80s fantasy.) I can't really speak to the quality of the writing itself anymore but the ideas thrown about are cool. Dimensional travel, multiverse, an epic saga of a planeswalking bad ass. Possibly also where Games Workshop "borrowed" the entire concept for Chaos and the Chaos Gods. A good series, but maybe not the easiest to get through. It also starts to unravel after the 3rd book I think, going from a classic, coherent series to a set of short stories and alternate universes.

[Draxis]

The Chronicles of Amber.  It's one of the few fantasy settings I know which creates an interesting and unique setting without taking the focus off the characters and what they are doing.  I wasn't able to really get interested in the second arc, but the first is probably the best fantasy series I have read.

[Tack]

whole book beginning with with what is basically buttrape.

If he's read brent weeks I don't really think it's a problem.

[XXSockXX]

Orwell.

It's not epic fantasy, but 1984 should be required reading for anyone.

Elric of Melnibone - An older series, circa the 80s. Dark, adult (as seems to be the trend in 80s fantasy.) I can't really speak to the quality of the writing itself anymore but the ideas thrown about are cool. Dimensional travel, multiverse, an epic saga of a planeswalking bad ass. Possibly also where Games Workshop "borrowed" the entire concept for Chaos and the Chaos Gods. A good series, but maybe not the easiest to get through. It also starts to unravel after the 3rd book I think, going from a classic, coherent series to a set of short stories and alternate universes.

Loved that stuff. Elric is actually older, 60s or 70s, and the original novels are pulp fiction written in a few days. So yeah, the quality of the writing is so-so, quite an anti-Tolkien in that regard, but it has a lot of great ideas in it that became fantasy archetypes later on. There are some later Elric novels that are much better written, but if you're into epic fantasy you should read all of them. Since Michael Moorcock basically invented the multiverse trope, pretty much everything he has written is somehow connected (via the Eternal Champion and the struggle between Chaos and Order), but most novels also work as stand-alone books. The Corum and Hawkmoon series are also epic fantasy with similar themes, though I'd start with classic Elric. There are also comics of it and there have been rumors of a movie for years, but that doesn't seem to go anywhere.

[Max White]

You know I always enjoyed Diana Wynne Jones... Even her kids books are worth the read, looking at you Howl's! Though if you must feel like a grown up there is always Deep Secrets.

[ChairmanPoo]

The Broken Empire saga, by Mark Lawrence

[Helgoland]

Orwell.

It's not epic fantasy, but 1984 should be required reading for anyone.

Whoops, didn't see that requirement - just responded to the thread title.
Orwell's pretty epic, though.

[miauw62]

Don't read the Discworld in order unless you play D&D... Better to get used to the world before you expose yourself to the full force of Pratchetts geekyness.

Then again I'm on bay12, so go right ahead.

I read them in order and enjoyed them without knowing anything about D&D, but I'm extremely geeky anyway.

Same here, I've read them in order so far. I'm currently at 2 thirds of Pyramids and I've got the next book still laying around. (Which is, I think, Guards! Guards!)

[scrdest]

G!G! is very different from the other Watch books, though, it basically started off as Pratchett attempting a mock-noir, and then the story got out of his control.

[Frumple]

I... I guess I'd recommend Piers Anthony? It's been a while since I've actually read any, but the guy's fairly prolific and pretty solid, just. Themes and whatnot. Common trends. Put bluntly, dude's a freak of the sexual sort (at least in terms of authorial bent) and beyond that can get into some really rather off stuff including but not limited to rape, incest (sometimes combined, those two), necrophilia, extreme social disparity, slavery, extreme gender issues, and... a bunch of other stuff. The list, it goes on. To kinda' put it into perspective, even his ostensibly young adult/children's series, Xanth, has at least one sex scene, albeit one that's sorta' censored, ish.

But. At the time I read it (I was much younger >_>), I enjoyed the Adept series (which is mixed fantasy/sci-fi), I've since found the Space Tyrant stuff (though it's sci-fi) surprisingly decent if you can get over/past some of the squiggly things (there's plenty!), liked the Battle Circle (post apoc!) and Incarnation series well enough (though, as I recall, some folks here have expressed issue with the latter, in particular. I take no offense from people taking issue with Anthony, haha.), and I think I got through the first two or three of the Mode series (this is one I'd say check the wikipedia page first, and beware all sorts of triggers, up to and including suicide. It gets pretty damn freaky.), those last two both being sorts of fantasy, if not quite a traditionally epic sort. Xanth is... Xanth. It's actually a fairly interesting world, but, well. It's Anthony and it's "punny". There was a Xanth video game made! I wouldn't recommend playing it

Avoid Firefly. It has nothing to do with the sci-fi series, at all. It is the reason I was freaking terrified when I first heard about the sci-fi series. It is the book in which I learned what necrophilia was, when I was all of about eight. Just... don't touch. Trust the Frumple. Stay away. Y'all have been warned. Again.

Similarly, you'll... probably want to avoid the Pornucopia stuff (dear gods, there was a sequel ;_;). It includes magical things like a person's reproductive organs getting stolen. It is thoroughly explicit. The name should be sufficient warning. That said, it does include one of the most amazing usages of accent/dialect I've ever actually seen put to writing, somewhere in the first half of the first book (iirc.). S'just... getting there. And then actually reading it, because it's mostly about smuggling demon eggs about in one's intestines. *coughs* I... didn't actually get past that part.

Point being... approach Anthony's works with caution, but maybe consider approaching. If you're under eighteen or so, stay the hell away from all of it, would probably be my recommendation.

In any case, seconding Butcher's Codex stuff, since it only got a little note. Only thing I'd warn about is the bit of rape-related stuff part way through the series. Nothing directly happens, but it comes close kinda' repeatedly and it's pretty damn obvious the author was actually playing on that... cliffhanging and whatnot in the face of, which is kinda... yeah. That and it's definitely not a trilogy. There's six books in the series

[Jiharo]

Piers Anthony

Killobyte, book about being trapped in MMORPG written before there were MMORPGs was also pretty enjoyable minus mentioned author appeal. You know it's Anthony by the pun in the title.

I found A man of his word series by Dave Duncan an enjoyable read. Sort of ordinary fantasy story but set in an interesting world and well-written.

[Avis-Mergulus]

There's also Lois McMaster Bujold! The problem is, I personally find her fantasy unreadable due to sappiness and preachiness, but her sci-fi (namely, the Vorkosigan saga) is immensely enjoyable, also IMHO. You could give it a try, there's mercenaries and starships and what is basically Imperial Russia IN SPESS.