Magician (Raymond E. Feist)

One of my favorite ever fantasy books - probably largely due to reading it when I was twelve, a great "ripping yarn" with a mix of classic fantasy, pirates, and invasion by samurai from another dimention.
I will admit the first hundred pages lack something, but this is more than made up when the riftwar breaks out in earnest.
Way way better than Lord of the Rings

Gave up after one-hundred pages, I just didn't get into it. Some of the assumptions the characters were making were a bit far fetched even for a fantasy novel.

Nat a bad wee fantasy book which thankfully stands alone and doesn't need to be read as the first in a series (which it is). This probably isn't for everyone and is obviously a first novel; the first 150-200 pages are pretty terrible, but it does pick up after that and come to a satisfactory conclusion (albeit with a totally anti-climactic last few chapters which I'll probably skip if I ever read it again).