OT: good fantasy books

[Deimos_tw]

Day/The Night Watch from Sergej Lukyanenko

/seconds that, and if you're too impatient for books the movie's good too

K.J. Parker's 'Fencer' Trilogy was fun.

Everything Eddings

Read more Tolkien

I found J.V. Jones interminably boring, personally - almost as bad as the wheel of time.

[Jazzepi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Amber

I absolutely loved The Chronicles of Amber. If you want a shorter read that's a mix of sci-fi and fantasy try out Lord of Light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light

Jazzepi

[Teraswaerto]

Not mentioned so far:

Michael Moorcock, and his The Eternal Champion body of work. Elric of Melniboné is probably the best known. Also Cormyr, Hawkmoon, Erekosë and many others.

Robert E. Howard, and the original Conan short stories. Classic sword and sorcery everyone should read.

Stephen King, and the Dark Tower. A strange postmodern metafiction that ties together all his novels. Sadly, I felt the series lost its focus towards the end.

[Xietor]

I have to disagree on Steven King's Dark Tower. While I am a fan of some of his work, with The Shining being on my alltime top 25 list, I did not enjoy the gunslinger.

He was not my idea of a hero, he let a kid die for no real reason. I sort of have to identify with the character, and care what happens to him, for me to have an interest in the book.

In martin's series, the only characters i care about, jon snow and bran(crippled kid) were not even included in his last book.

[alexti]

Few additions that weren't mentioned:
David Coe. "Winds of the Forelands" serie.
That's a pretty good serie and the books don't detiorate as the serie progresses (at least not first 4 I've read). Combination of original political system and well-balanced magic system create rather interesting world. Few characters are "too white" or "too black", but the bulk of the cast is somewhere in between. Strategy and tactics (oops, I meant plot) are very good, maybe not at Martin's level, but well above average.
David Coe. "The LonTobyn chronicle". This earlier (first by the author) trilogy is fantasy with a bit of SF mixed-in. Magic world competes with industrial world. Quite good, maybe a bit weaker than "Winds of the Forelands".

Robert Silverberg's "Majipoor" books. Technically a science fiction, but stylistically it's a fantasy. Unusually peaceful for the fantasy book, well-written characters and good epic atmosphere without pages after pages with no events (common plague of genre).

George Martin's other books: "Sandkings", "The hedge knight", "Fevre Dream", "Windhaven", "Dying of the light". They vary from SF to gothic to fantasy, but all are very good. None of them have the stuff from "A song of ice and fire" Edi was unhappy about Btw, I agree with Edi about 4th book and with Teraswaerto about the first 3.