I want some good fantasy recommendations, but so much of the genre is unbearable. I've identified two main reasons why, though I'm sure there are also many others.
- YA desperately written for a movie deal and/or teenaged foids
by older foids 
Can't stand this garbage and I doubt I need to explain why.
- Conversely I can't get through a lot of "standard" fantasy written by moids who don't see the difference between a novel and a DnD campaign.
Characters and plot usually take a backseat to pointless wiki lore and unending exposition. I'd say I like worldbuilding but it should be done more naturally than vomiting paragraphs. The plot shouldn't stop because the author needs us to know every detail about the temple or whatever we just passed by. The majority of these settings will also be shameless ripoffs of Tolkien and/or DnD with nothing new to offer.
I need some fantasy recs that avoid these pitfalls. I'm interested in finding any of the following
- Unique main characters. Examples of anything that made a particular protagonist stand out above the genre.
- Same with settings. Any that stood out (ideally right from the get-go, and not just because you'd gotten used to it after eight books)
- Stories that were concise while still being good. I'm not against wordier entries, but I think a lot of fantasy authors have trouble with brevity. I'm wondering if anyone knows of exceptions who still managed to pull off something creative.
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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.
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