I like the broken empire series, before they are hanged, The Blade Itself, Last argument of kings

It's been awhile since I read it but I really enjoyed The Black Company. I only read the first book and it's pretty old, but I liked it.

More modern I really loved The Lies of Locke Lamora. Really strong characters in that.

The first Malazan book was good to but nothing after that. Story goes off the fricking rails and I hate it

I only read the title of your post but House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski was really good imho. Very unconventional and trippy. A classic sort of scifi might be A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is a must mention. The Jaunt by Steven King is a good short story, but a bit of a bummer.

Have you read any of Gene Wolfe's work?

He's got his own brand of fantasy style autism, but he's definitely one of the more well regarded fantasy authors, and he doesn't fall into the typical pitfalls of the more modern works that you seem to have grown tired of. His best known work, his Book of the New Sun series, is only 4 books long which is pretty short compared to many others.

Another one worth looking into if you haven't heard of them would be Ursula K. Le Guin, best known for her Earthsea series and also some of her other Sci Fi works.

China Miéville's Bas-Lag books? Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council

World with magic but also late 19th century steampunk type tech (written before steampunk was played out). Innovative fantasy species and polities. The preeminent setting is New Crobuzon, Bas-Lag's hustling and bustling NYC/London/Singapore equivalent.

I think he pretty much set out to avoid the fantasy tropes. Himself he's some kind of old-school full communist. In the first two books this flavors the writing slightly without detracting from the quality, but the third book does go full commie and suffers for it. Still found it worth the read.

EDIT: I forget the best part, these are NOT A TRILOGY, that's right, this science fiction or fantasy author somehow managed to write multiple independent books with their own complete stories.

Space fantasy, enders game

Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. It's about the massive gothic fortress Gormenghast isolated in the middle of nowhere barely inhabited by It's crazy noble family.

@Civilization_IV

Have you read Lord of the Rings? I see you mentioned ripoffs but not if you tried the books themselves. They do have the thing you mentioned, but are still pretty good to me. I also second Book of the New Sun, close enough to fantasy. Tbh i have not had much success with the genre myself either. Maybe The First Law series? Those were OK i thought but didnt quite do it for me in a way id recommend confidently. They do seem to fit your criteria though.

People shit on it all the time but i really enjoyed The Name of the Wind, the second one is pure autism though and the author doesnt seem too keen to ever finish the trilogy (probably because the second book is the equivalent of a tire neurodivergentally squeeling stuck in mud), but i would still read the 3rd if it came out because I liked the first one so much and still want to see where it goes.

ASOIAF has great characters but probably wont ever end. Also pretty easy to read, almost like they were made for TV. Pretty basic suggestion but didnt see you mention it either. Also pretty long series I guess.

I liked the movie Stardust, maybe you will like the book. I think it helped me get laid once too.

Cant think of anything else, tried a few like sanderson and didnt like at all.

The Belgariad series

Too much of Fantasy is YA.

A Song of Ice and Fire is quality fantasy, but I doubt the series ever gets finished.

Sci-Fi is just a better genre. Read some classics like Phillip K Peepee (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which Blade Runner is loosely based off), The Man In the High Castle, Minority Report), Heinlein (Stranger in A Strange Land, Starship Troopers, Moon is a Harsh Mistress) or Nivens/Pournelle (Ringworld, Mote in Gods Eye, The Gripping Hand)

If you liked Enders Game but thought the sequels were too out there, read the Enders Shadow Saga which is much more grounded. Bean is arguably cooler than Ender.

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern has some good entries for Fantasy if you’re into a unique dragonshit world, but straddles that YA boundary.

Discworld, LotR, Dune, the Odyssey & Iliad, Game of Thrones (haven't read this), His Dark Materials (Golden Compass movie is from this but the books are long), The Dark Tower (also haven't read this)

OP i also think you might like The First Law (big surprise) because there’s basically zero worldbuilding. lots of writing is done about who’s currently in what army, which fights against the other army for this country, what happens in the battle, etc, but there’s no neurodivergent attention to fake centuries of historical detail. magic exists but there’s no hyper specific system that you have to know the rules of, it shows up rarely and when it does it’s akin to illiterate peasants experiencing a nuke going off and goes completely unexplained in the text. it’s a wholly character driven story.

also i really like the way the author plays with genres, especially in the standalones. each book is very distinct and fresh compared to the previous.

Low Town was unique and a decent setting. Kind of a noir-fantasy. Follows a drug dealer in the shittiest part of a fantasy city, doesn't focus too much on magic and reads more like a detective/mystery.

Maybe the Earthsea books? They're short, and the unique archipelago setting is vividly described but used in service of telling stories. The main protagonist is a wizard who spends most of his time on interesting magic based quests and almost no time fighting regular bad guys. The role of "wizard" is treated as a unique social role and way of life, rather than being a glorified RPG function. The books have a neat mythological vibe and touch on psychoanalytic themes. They also have actual endings instead of sequel baiting, so you can stop whenever you want. (I've only read the original trilogy).

The books were originally marketed as YA, but the only real artifact of this is that the viewpoint characters are young (the original protagonist appears in the whole trilogy and develops into an older mentor figure). There's no relationship drama or other common YA bs. I reread them recently as an adult and I think they hold up for all ages.

Honestly, most fantasy novels are low tier trash, it sucks.

Seaon Russel has some interesting takes on what magic would look like in like 18th and 19th centuries. In "Beneath the Vaulted Hills" and "The Compass of the Soul" Them "Moontide and Magic Rise"

Wheel of Time is good, but its a lore wiki and exposition book. On the other hand it was one of the first for it.

First four books of Terry Goodkind's "Sword Of Truth" Series, after that it just becomes lolbert saves the day against commies. Like literally, he defeats communism by thinking about capitalism really hard in book 7.