David Gemmell who sadly passed away a couple of years back is probably the greatest writer of Heroic Fantasy I have ever read.
His novels are full of characters first and then stories second. That doesn't mean that he couldn't write a decent story; far from it, he wrote incredible dialogue for his characters that referred to Gemmell's religious beliefs (Christianity) but as a non believer you can read them as sage writings without any force. His writing was universal. So much so that I didn't even know he was a devout Christian until many years after reading his books. His writing was that subtle.
Most of his books are not complicated at all. They are forceful, direct but far from cliched boy's own tales.
Here are a bunch of quotes from his novels and what I so admired about Gemmell was just before he became a full time writer he was a night club bouncer and not an intellect yet he spoke more wisdom in a paragraph than many more educated people have proffered in their entire lifetime:
David Gemmell Quotes (Author of Legend)