I finished reading the main storyline for the Malazan series. Overall I thought it was incredibly well done, perhaps the best fantasy series I've read. It's something like 12,000 pages or so, but it didn't really seem to drag on like some do (Wheel of time for example). There are lots of storylines and "main" characters to keep track of though, so if that bothers you then meh. I didn't feel like in this series there were many characters where you could say "this is the good guy, he does good stuff, that is the bad guy and he does bad stuff". They are more dynamic than that. There wasn't really even a good vs evil thing going on, because often neither side of a conflict was clearly more good/evil than the other. One criticism I have seen of the series is the power creep as you go on through the books; the super important mains get like "oh you thought what I did last time was badass, watch this!" over and over etc. I think that's pretty typical of sci-fi and fantasy stuff in general though, so overall if that's the biggest complaint I'd say it did a good job. I'll be looking to get the
novellas and novels to read at some point as well.
I just started reading Mistborn and it seems pretty decent so far. Will update with more when I finish the trilogy (or book, if it turns out bad).
I'm surprised I haven't noted Name of the Wind yet. That was a book that I couldn't put down. All in all though, it's probably pretty typical of the "poor boy goes to magic school" type books. Book two of the trilogy is out now.
For those of you who like LoTR, there was a trilogy I read about 1800 pages where book one had the entire plot of the LoTR trilogy, and then books two and three had similar "unlikely hero goes on quest to save the world" stories. One of them had demons from another world invading through a rift and unlikely hero had to go on quest + unite the races to save the world, and the other all I remember is a magical forest. I'll edit back if I remember the name of it, or maybe someone else knows it. I didn't think much of it, but I also didn't think much of LoTR.