[sharkbitten]

The Sword of Shannara and The Heritage of Shannara series of books by Terry Brooks are some of my favorites after Lord of the Rings. The first book, "The Sword of Shannara" came out in about 1977 and is very good, although there are a large number of parallels to LOTR. The 2 sequels, "The Elfstones of Shannara" and "The Wishsong of Shannara" take place hundresds of years after Sword and are almost stand alone books. The Heritage series (4 books) are more of a traditional series and must be read in order.
All of them are very good. Brooks has a easy style to read and is very good at character development and tells a good yarn.
Brooks has a couple of other series connected to Shannara which I haven't read yet. He also has a prequel out to "The Sword of Shannara" which is pretty good.

Now if only they'd make some movies covering one of the Shannara series, I'd die a happy man. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

David Eddings, who has been mentioned earlier, has a few series out that are quite good.

Another good series is Mary Stewart's "The Crystal Cave" series about Merlin and King Arthur. There's 4 books in the series. The first 3 are excellent(especially the second one, The Hollow Hills), the fourth is meh.
It is told from the first person from the view point of Merlin. It starts from when Merlin was a boy, long before Arthur was born and goes until Arthur is killed by his bastard son in the fourth book of the series.
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