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I read rather a lot of fantasy, and there a so many long books in fantasy. Lord of the Rings is an obvious one, but I didn't mind that because the story is so good, and it's often split into the three volumes in the UK. It seems to be that most new fantasy authors just write huge, great fat bloated doorstop books, and take forever to get the story going. It seems that most of the time quality seems to have been sacrificed for quantity. I'll give some examples:
The Dwarves series: Markus Heitz
Sword of Truth series: Terry Goodkind
All Trudi Canavan books
A Song of Ice and Fire: George R.R. Martin
Malazan Book of the Fallen: Steven Erikson
Wheel of Time: Robert Jordan
I'm not saying these books are bad, its just that a lot of fantasy books seem to be too long, and seem to be of lower quality. My favourite author, David Gemmell, did not write huge doorstop books his whole writing career, and his only books to pass the 600 page mark were his Troy books. He proves that you don't need over 700 pages to tell a good story.
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