To some extent I'm goofing on the idea of "worst fantasy ever" - obviously there are worse authors then Eddings in that era (Dragonlance comes immediately to mind). I haven't read Jordan though I hear nothing good. Brooks is just flatly dull (except for a few lines about Gamma World style biomechanical dead futurepast monsters) and that fails to inspire me, even to mockery. Eddings isn't good though - not even close to good - but meorable enough that I can talk a bit of smack. With that era I keep asking myself - was Earthsea doing it better 15 years earlier? The answer is pretty much - Yup.
Dnd fiction is the least interesting fantasy I've ever read and I am very curious why this is so. I'd blame it on the universe it takes place in, which is itself a mess cobbled together from different fantasy sources without design or reason or any sort of resonance with myth and legend (I guess Dragonlance suffers a little less then Forgotten Realms) but also on the immense difficulty of writing in a universe of someone else's creation.
Earthsea is hard to compare to other fantasies, especially Epic Fantasies, because it deliberately sets out to do something entirely different. There are no dark lords, massing armies, casts of characters and magic objects to be recovered in earthsea. The problems that face the lagoon can usually be solved via co-operation, some inner revelation or the odd hint of courage. I might at some point have to reread it to figure out what parts were good and what parts have not held up (I remember hating Tehanu and considering it incredibly boring for example).
I've read Bakker, but I get him a bit confused with Joe Abercrombie, and while I'd say he's better then Eddings - his and Abercrombie's style of hardboiled fantasy (which is taking a line from Martin and owes a look more to Cook's Black Company) is decent enough, but very of the moment - I don't know how it'll hold up. With Bakker one of the things I like was that he's not afraid to get a little weird and inexplicable in the way of Vance era stories - he leaves stuff open to being strange. Ambercrombie doesn't manage this, but I find his stand alone-ish novels (say Red Country and the battle one) more appealing then Bakker.
I think from a literary standpoint Cook as an influencer is right on, but Martin is probably to blame for drawing the entire genre in that direction. Martin started out very strong but his books have begun to putter out and mired in plot threads. I don't think we will see the end of the series before he dies. His frequent use of the fake-out main-character death and dreadful pacing issues started leaving me colder and colder. Conversely, with Bakker I think the only part where his work really lagged was at The Thousandfold Thought, which felt a lot less grounded because of the plethora of fight-scenes involving shapechangers, magicians and Kellhus taking on fifty guys, to the point where I felt the urge to watch an episode of Dragon Ball Z to the Game of Thrones opening theme.
After that Bakker's counter-riff to Lotr picks up steam. The world is vivid, riven with history and philosophy, vast and grand compared to the grime-covered emphemera of Scott Lynch, Andrzej Sapkowski or M. Lawrence. Its also one of the few recent fantasy books I've read that attempts to explore some serious concepts, and offers some insights into human nature, however bleak. There is no hint of parochial, 21st century cosmopolitan mores in any of the blind, mad wretches Bakker describes, where all men are fundamentally deluded by their very natures and true faith is both a formidable power and a fatal flaw. Lord of the Rings cross-bred with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Aguirre and the Bible. Its an uneven but great work and I think it will hold up better then Martin, Lawrence, Sapkowski, Lynch or others (though the Grimdark era will certainly end).
I can't think of any post-Martin book that stuck with me like Bakker's books did. Ambercrombie I have yet to try, and Melvielle I found creative and very beautifully written but terribly unsatisfying (probably by design).
