For obvious reasons I should say Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Quartet. However, I would also like to cite Jose Luis Borges (author of many fantastical fictions), and The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende (loosely based on the magical tale-telling of Scheherezade) as being among my personal favourites - neither author perhaps part of the 'fantasy' section at your local bookshop, but (in a wholly original way) certainly part of the same realm of imaginative narrative, and perhaps closer in truth to Tolkien than many of the obvious imitators. Although majoring in SF, Brian Aldiss and Ray Bradbury have also written many ingenious and entertaining stories that qualify as fantasy. And for me, The Little Prince by Antione de Saint Exupery is a profound and moving work of fantasy.
I also enjoy thoughtful workings and re-working of 'true' myths and fairy tales - versions of the essentially tragic Cuchulain stories from Ireland, or Angela Carter's dark perspective on the traditional Perrault fairy tales, or Oscar Wilde's beautiful stories - highly recommended!
Ah, the list is endless ... but as you may have seen from my "rant" about fantasy elsewhere, I'm not a big fan of the standard genre-fillers. To each his/her own [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] But I'm sure there is plenty of good stuff that I haven't got to yet, and this thread is a useful shortcut [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
Peace
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