I'm reading Sanderson's Way of Kings right now. About... five, six chapters in? Maybe a couple of more. I like this dude's prose but it feels like he learned a lot of how he writes gender from Jordan, which is.... potentially very bad.

I hope it turns out as good as it could be.

Na'h you'll be fine I'm with Khuutra on this one, having said that there isn't a book on this earth that where all going to like.

has anyone read the Fionavar Tapestry Trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay, I at first put it off many years ago since it involved character's from our modern world going too a fantasy World and I never liked the approach of modern guy/girl goes to another world and lo and behold he/she can handle a sword etc. with expertise.

Fortunately apart from one character and his prowess was more brute strength combined with a war axe they weren't like that at all and i ended up really enjoying it, looking back if reread  today with all the Tolkien enspired Fantasy that saturated  the market it might seem to lack some originality but still be a great read and well worth it  even if for some it is just to visit the world that is the core to a lot of his work and referenced in Tigana among others.

Another set of books is the  Mordant's Need  Novels The Mirror of her dreams and A man rides through by Stephen Donaldson.

I haven't read the Fionavar Tapestry but Tigana is probably my favorite single-volume work of fantasy. How do they compare with each other?

I've read that that book is slow, but good once it gets going. Let me know what you think of it when you finish as I saw it in the library the other day and thought about picking it up at some point.

They are quite different just like Tigana is different from say the Troubadour History and ancient French language of Aquitaine southern France that he uses as his basis for the book A song for Arbonne or the Byzantium influenced Sarantine Mosaic books. He wrote it after editing with Christopher Tolkien the Sillmarilion and has said himself that the Fionvar Tapestry was influenced by that experience rather than the LOTR itself , like I said it pleasantly surprised me at the time and yes it is beholden to High Fantasy and it's his first work but I rate it up there with the best work in the Tolkien type fantasy genre, it takes off slowly but each book in the trilogy betters the one before and I recommend it to you.

Well ,the first book wasn't bad, from what I heard. It goes downhill after that though.

You didn't read it?

You're judging a book series based on a television show?

no issues with the first book.  its almost exactly as the show is, if youve watched that.   

Also still kind of miffed about the lack of English translation for Sapkowski. Maybe - maybe I should learn French

I mentioned from the get go that I didn't read the books, but I know people who did, and I also read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, and they get worse and worse with each book. And the TV show is just like the first book. Not much is changed. And I wasn't crazy about it, so there's no need to read the books (I'm not even a fantasy fan).