I have read Susan Cooper, and really enjoyed it. The opening chapters of The Dark Is Rising were especially good, filled with a kind of disjointed, surreal terror that made the threat seem very real.
Brandon Sanderson's stuff is pretty good character-driven fantasy. I haven't read his Wheel of Time yet, but the Mistborn trilogy was very good and I liked it a lot. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller write some very good space opera, perhaps a bit light for some people but enjoyable to read and re-read. And of course Lois McMaster Bujold is just excellent at SF and fantasy.
I didn't find Amber Spyglass at all bad. Certainly it introduced several new characters, but the plot was an evolution of the previous two books and the ending appropriate to the tone of the trilogy (i.e., sad).
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Brandon Sanderson's stuff is pretty good character-driven fantasy. I haven't read his Wheel of Time yet, but the Mistborn trilogy was very good and I liked it a lot. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller write some very good space opera, perhaps a bit light for some people but enjoyable to read and re-read. And of course Lois McMaster Bujold is just excellent at SF and fantasy.
I didn't find Amber Spyglass at all bad. Certainly it introduced several new characters, but the plot was an evolution of the previous two books and the ending appropriate to the tone of the trilogy (i.e., sad).