Just Finished: The thousandfold thought / R. Scott Bakker.*
Just Finished: A feast for crows / George R.R. Martin.*
*Two series that I recommend you avoid.
Why? While they're certainly not pleasant reads, but they're also unquestionably some of the best work going on in modern fantasy, and about the only hope we have of ripping epic fantasy out of its Tolkienesque rut.
Bakker is weird as **** and his books even made me wince a few times, but George R. R. Martin, on the other hand, is a critical and commercial darling with about the most die-hard fanbase an author can hope for.
If they're the best that modern fantasy has to offer (they aren't, see: The Name of The Wind), then I weep for the future.
Bakker series introduces a convoluted mess of ideas that get left behind, with no real explanation behind them. And the only characters worth reading about are the least covered. I would honestly describe the protagonist as an Anti-Mary Sue, which pisses me off far more than a regular one
ever would.
As for Martin.... I have a serious problem with any series that:
)Takes more than two novels (I think he's at six, and hasn't actually stated what the damned series is about. He's inferred, certainly, but that isn't enough.) to tell us what the Hell is going on.
)Kills off main characters like they're freaking red shirts.
)Inserts modern vulgarities into a pseudo-medieval universe.
)Covers the most interesting sub-arcs the least.
)Has a huge fan-base, despite being utter tripe.
I suppose you could consider those to be personal problems with them, rather than a valid viewpoint of criticism; but, shut up.
And don't even get me started on Tolkienesque "novels." :/
