Forgot to mention that I picked up the first book of what seems to be the latest David and Leah Eddings series, The Dreamers. I didn't set particularly high standards for it, because while I enjoyed their first few series when I was much younger, the writing got rather repetitive and the "said-ism" is pretty rampant. (You know, when the author consults a thesaurus every time a character says anything, ie. Polgara murmured, Barak groaned, Belgarath gloated, Garion muttered, etc.)
Anyway, I'm only about halfway in, but even more than the Althalus book, this one almost reads as a parody of the Eddings' style. Characters seem rehashes of other characters: Eleria being a direct copy of Flute/Aphrael, right down to the obsessive kissing and silly names for other characters, Rabbit being the Silk/Talon character, Zelana being a cross between Polgara and Ce'Nedra, and so on. I can't say whether I'd recommend this to past fans or not. I'm relatively tolerant of the early series flaws and quirks and this one is irking me.
Also, as with most of the Eddings books, you could more or less skip right over the theologically inclined prologue setting up the myths and story themes. The flowery language they tend to go for there usually ends up killing any vitality of the myths they are trying to create.