David Eddings
Bruce Baugh at Tor.com has a retrospective on the work of the late David Eddings:
David Eddings passed away yesterday, at the age of 77. At the risk of sounding cliched, he’ll be missed.
He wrote epic quest fantasy in the grand style, with heroes who discover unsuspected destinies, companions who ply their various specialties on behalf of the hero and their shared missions, highly-placed evil schemers, and the lot.