I actually like Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series of books for the most part and consider them good. They have their own issues, but I found them entertaining and would not mind reading the lot of them again.
As for George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, I liked it at first, but it's almost all downhill. It has its good portions, but more bad than good in my opinion. I do not like the gratuitous feasting on rape and torture that is a fairly prevalent trend throughout the series. Martin has a lot of interesting characters, but he simply throws them away for no discernible reason when he runs out of ideas for them and generally they are not replaced or the subplots involving them tied up at all. He does have some interesting characters that actually grew out of some fairly two-dimensional cardboard cutouts into "real" characters. Jaime Lannister for one, in Storm of Swords, the Hound and Tyrion Lannister earlier.
Edis's list of good fantasy
- J.V.Jones: Barbed Coil, Book of Words trilogy (Baker's Boy, A Man Betrayed, MAster and Fool), Sword of Shadows trilogy (A Cavern of Black Ice, A Fortress of Grey Ice, A Sword from Red Ice (Nov. 2007)). Contemporary fantasy does NOT get any better than the Sword of Shadows trilogy. That one trounces anything and everything else on the market that I've ever read.
- Janny Wurts: To Ride Hell's Chasm, Wars of Light and Shadow (currently at 7 volumes, more to come at some point), Cycle of Fire trilogy, Master of Whitestorm. If J.V. Jones's SoS trilogy wasn't so bloody good, Wurts would be undisputed queen of fantasy writing.
- C.S. Friedman: Coldfire trilogy (Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, Crown of Shadows), see above.
- Marcus Herniman: Arrandin trilogy. Has its problems, but I really liked this one. The final book was in many ways the weakest of them all, but the first one (Siege of Arrandin) completely drew me in.
- R. Scott Bakker: Prince of Nothing, already mentioned, totally kickass.
- Raymond E. Feist: The Riftwar saga (the original four volumes starting with Magician), and its followup books up until the end of the Serpentwar saga, plus the Empire trilogy cowritten with Janny Wurts
- Deborah Chester The Sword, The Ring, The Chalice trilogy and its followup books and the War of Shadows trilogy are all good.
- Glen Cook: Black Company. 'Nuff said.
- R.E. Howard: The Conan Chronicles. What, you thought I would leave HIS name out of the list?
- Ursula Le Guin: The Earthsea books are great.
- Tolkien If Howard and Le Guin get mentioned, then he does too.
- Roger Zelazny: The Chronicles of Amber
- Patricia A McKillip: The The Riddle-master's Tale trilogy. A very good series, though a bit slow to start. It has the novelty of having very unusual villains and a suitably mysterious plot.
That should do for starters.