Fantasy, or fantastic?
Fantasy
Robin McKinley
Jane Lindskold
Fantastic
Tanya Huff
Jim Butcher
I read more SF than fantasy, probably for the reason that deli_conker pointed out. So much of it feels the same, with the same characters, doing the same things. McKinley's rewritten fairy tales are fairly good (though Spindle's End needed another rewrite and a serious edit), and Lindskold has a great series that I really need to read more than the first book of. As for fantastic, Huff's Vicki Nelson series is great, because I've visited Toronto, and I can totally believe her world, and Butcher has fun with his definitely-not-perfect-and-all-seeing wizard in Chicago. I like stories I can relate to, with characters that do or are something new and interesting, but that are well written. Books with too many POV changes, bad sentence structure, or huge plot holes that are visible on a first cursory read are just a waste of my time, really. I don't enjoy reading them. I should really read David Weber's fantasy, since I enjoy his SF so much...
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