Being a little bit of a fantasy nut my choices are a bit steirotype...

However I love Terry Goodkind, (especially his earlier books.)

Additionally Terry Brooks, I don't like his new stuff, and have a little bit of a hard time going back and rereading his stuff now that I've found better, but that man single handedly inspired my love of reading as a child with The Sword of Shanara It's your classic tale of men elfs and dwarfs, a mysterious magic user, and everything else you would expect.

However the big winner for me would have to be David Eddings. Most people I speak to that have read him prefer his Belgariad(sp) series. Personally as much as I enjoyed those, the winner goes to The Elenium and The Tamuli By the end of ther series the charechters were so well fleshed out and felt so real that I swear they could have hopped out of the books and survived in a little coven in northern Ireland just fine. Yep it's another fantasy series, but with awsome charechters and a bit of a suitiably darker feeling, and everyone seems so human in the series. You don't get the feeling that any one charechter is more than human, and indestrutable. I didn't get the feeling that charechter x, y, or z was immune from danger through plot device, logically they are, but it does not give the feeling as such. The charechters are badass, but still human, still emotional, still alive.

I suppose you've heard enough poorly written fanboyisim from me by now so I'll leave my post as that which it is.