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If you lean away from the gritty/dark stories, I would avoid GRRM or Erikson.
You could also try the first books of either the Sword or Truth series or the Wheel of Time series. They both make decent stand-alone novels even if you choose not to continue the series. It has been a while but with SoT, I remember thinking that the other books were only written after the fact when the first was successful; they do get incrementally more repetitive and preachy.
I never felt that the WoT was a dark series but it was rambling and very slow to progress in the middle of the series but Sanderson did a fairly good job wrapping things up. Again, the first book is an excellent read and could be read as a semi-stand-alone book. It doesn't wrap up quite as well as the first Sword of Truth book but it is a fairly clean ending.
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