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All three prominent series in the OP (which is to say, not Goodkind) have landed briefly on my TBR and then fallen off. Malazan is still a "maybe," though the military focus and the ebook pricing are both major turn-offs. Jordan's books I've instinctively avoided all my life, but based on Sanderson's praise, I started the first WoT on audio and found it intolerable within the first 30 minutes. The characters were just too absurd and operatic, and the world as unimaginative as all the covers and blurbs I'd left on the shelves at used-book stores over the years had suggested.
When it comes to epic fantasy, it seems like I'm firmly in the New School: love me some Sanderson, Rothfuss and Lynch, and even more boilerplate stuff like Butcher or Modesitt, but when I try to dive into the old canon, it ranges from tedious to laughable. I slogged through The Belgariad a few years back, and the best I can say for it is it was sometimes so-bad-it's-good, like an Ed Wood movie: ideas so superficially considered that they verge on incoherence, values that would be offensive if they weren't presented with such imbecilic earnestness, and totally unaware of its own absurdity.
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