For a stand-alone fantasy book I highly recommend Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. It's an utter favourite of mine.
It's about about an ex-General who was betrayed into slavery who makes it home and desperately wants to retire into obscurity. Instead he's roped into becoming the tutor and guardian of his Royal Princess, whose ruling family is in a very precarious political position, and suffering under a magical curse. Religious and magical and adventurous hi-jinks ensue. The hero in this book is one of my all-time favourite good-guys. In fact there's a lot of things I want to rave about this book, but it'd turn into a wall of text.
The Changeover by Margaret Mahy is truly excellent, even if it's aimed at teenage readers.
A young high-school teenage girl picks up her younger brother one day, and on the way home he's attacked by an evil spirit disguised as a shop-owner, who possesses him and starts eating his soul. Her mother doesn't believe her explanation of her little brother's illness, so in desperation she approaches an older boy at school, who she's recognised in the past as a witch, to beg his help for her brother. This book has some really beautiful writing in it, as well as a fast-paced and engaging story.
For a short fantasy Trilogy that's all wrapped up, there's Orphans of Chaos by John C Wright.
5 orphans reared in an exclusive orphanage suspect there's something really strange about themselves and their situation. It turns out they're right! Their true memories are wiped, they aren't in their real bodies... they don't even come from this dimension! It helps if you know some Greek Mythology, and a little String theory, or higher dimensional physics. But you don't have to.
Each of the orphans is gorgeous looking in their own way, and operates on their own entire magic system. Among all the desperate adventures and thwarted romances between mind-wipes there's a scattering of brief soft-**** interludes that I found highly entertaining.
For a longer, but entirely finished and wrapped up trilogy I love Daughter of the Empire by Raymond E Feist and Janny Wurts.
A young woman aristocrat in a highly formal, militaristic and patriarchal society is put in high jeopardy when she's married off against her will and her father dies. From a position of suffering and almost complete powerlessness, she uses intellectual guile to start to secure some safety and happiness for herself and the people she loves and values. In most cases I have not liked co-authored books. But there's nothing wrong with the writing in this trilogy. I find it enthralling and imaginative. There is no need to have read Feist's Rift-War series, this is a stand-alone story. But for those who have, this is a story set in the enemy empire beyond the Rift.
Edited, Nov 6th 2008 10:44am by Aripyanfar