I'm a really big fan of Gemmell. I have all of his books as far as I know, which took quite a while since he has more than 30. The Drenai books are my favourite (Druss is an all-time great character) but most of his work was pretty solid and it was a real shame that he died so young. I know his wife is writing now and she was supposedly quite involved in his process so I might try her book and see how it is.
Really enjoying Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series so far, it's his most "epic" series yet, although I think he could stand to slim the books down a bit. You don't need to write the max size every time. I don't mind it that much because the books are still good and I'm getting a lot for my money but I think if you can tell a tighter story in 2/3rds the words you probably should.