One word....
Eddings - pedestrian. The belgariad's a great read because it obeys all the rules. Unfortunately he uses up all his good ideas so there is no point going further.
Hobb - challenging. She breaks a lot of the rules that Eddings doesn't, there are few moral absolutes in her work. Excellent reading because they keep you guessing, even if they can frustrate due to a lack of 'happy ever after'.
Goodkind - GHASTLY. Don't even bother. The early stuff is quite obviously a second rate plagiarism of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and after that it devolves into an almost completely unreadable defence of objectivist philosophy. No amount of tortured English (believe me, he tries so hardit's embarrassing) can make that hysterical hooey sound reasonable. This series of books is just dreadful. Read the WOT, even if the original author did die before finishing it, and I admit books 6-10 are a little slow, it's infinitely better than anything in the Sword of Truth.

Cheers
I-M
(infinite_monkey, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 14:50, 2 replies)

Thank IM
Hobbs definately stuck out as an author that has made a lot of people very happy, with the odd impatient person not liking her works.
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 14:12, closed)

good review
I'm revisiting the Sword of Truth stuff at the moment, and the first few books aren't actually all that bad, as I go on I am getting more into the terrible philosophising.

The trouble is, they made a tv series, and I am infatuated with the woman in it...
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:24, closed)