I’m new to the fantasy community, but I’m glad to see it here on Lemmy as well! I would say my favorite novel/series so far has been Mistborn, but it’s kind of the only one I’ve read so far (although it was fantastic). I’d like to gauge all of your responses too!
The Powder Mage trilogy by Bryan McClellan. Its world is set in the middle of an industrial revolution where you have some more traditional mages running around, but also a new breed of mages that consume gunpowder to do all sorts of interesting things. It’s not a very “deep” story but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks has a very good hard magic system. It explores themes of identity, the problems of adhering to dogma, and has a likeable main character.
The Gentleman Bastard series by Scott Lynch is a kind of swashbuckling adventure style story. Its world is very well developed (for the few locations the story takes place in) and have some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever read. This is one of those books that made me laugh out loud at some of the situations.
The Demon Cycle series by Peter V. Brett also has a great world setting. The world used to be very technologically advanced before demons started to invade from the underworld and nearly wiped out humanity. The world regressed to a more medieval style society with small cities and villages surviving only by the use of runes along their perimeter to keep the demons away.