I would highly recommend The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie and then his books after that. The best fight scenes I've ever read coupled with some brilliantly complex characters.

I thought it was excellent. I feel that Brandon Sanderson did battle scenes better than RJ did, and that's saying something. I feel that he did the ending (for all characters, not just the last bit with Rand) really well except for maybe a couple more lines for each character and I wanted more about Min. I'm not entirely clear on what she does next. My one complaint from the last book is that I find it hard to believe that Min would stay with the Seanchan. She despises their way of life, dislikes their leader and doesn't even like Mat much.

But apart from that minor issue, I thought the book was great, the best bit would definitely be Lan v Demandred. Best line in the whole series for me.

Nowhere. At least not in a city. While beautifully written (Best ever made in my opinion, even over Lord of the Rings) this is a shitty (sorry for the language Nynaeve) world to live barring the Two Rivers. Every medieval city has diseases and crime and general death and low life-expectancy. Although I like the idea of a sleepy little town cut off from the rest of the world.