I'll throw in a bit on Sanderson too.  I enjoy his work but it's not at the top of my list (that would be Zelazny).  I read quite a bit of his YA stuff with my kids and had a good time with it.  Some of it actually has pretty unique premises, such as the Alcatraz and Beyonders books.  His first novel, Elantris was pretty unique too, though much of it was too downbeat for me to enjoy.  Overall I would say he's less derivative than most current fantasy authors.

Awesome didn't know this existed.  I'm now a backer.  Lots of money but no time to play.  I like the Stormlight books so I'm basically buying this to have as a collector's item on my shelf to be burnt in the fireplace by my grandchildren when I die.

As for why I like Stormlight is that's its very aspirational fantasy.  Fairly predictable but the supers in it are all really messed up and dealing with their problems is how they ascend levels.  There's loads of cool secret history stuff going on with very unreliable narrators.  It takes a long time to get where its going and you can usually tell where its going by half way through but the payoffs are really good.  Sanderson excels at building to a payoff.

But then I liked the Wheel of Time so go figure.