Young adult fiction. That stuff is relaxing. I'll take a look.You can't go wrong with wizards. (Even if Nicholas Cage gave it a damn good shot recently. Or at least his co-star did.)

I've liked the most recent two Pratchett novels Unseen Academicals and I Shall Wear Midnight.

Unseen Academicals was great, I haven't read I Shall Wear Midnight yet. I've been half hearted about the Tiffany Aching since I lost my respect for the Feegles. The Kender got insecure and forbade the Feegles from protecting or assisting their most important Ally (Tiffany) and the Feegles obeyed. They went from being hilarious tough little faerie guys to a bunch of cowards enthralled by a corrupt power structure. There are a few things more dangerous than an insecure person with power and deference to such people out of respect rather than practical necessity is something I hold in contempt.

Of course, I will no doubt love Midnight when I read it. I'm also hoping Practchett gets around to a third Von Lipvig book. Vetinari was hinting about taxes.

I'm pretty sure that the book with the small unit battle was Black Blade Blues by J. A. Pitts, which is a pretty good book in general.

I've wondered about Jacqueline Carey. The Kushiel books seem, well, hard. I'm not sure how much I could empathise with a character whose defining feature is that she takes sexual pleasure in pain, even to the extreme. Yet they do seem to come with some strong recommendations. Eliezer, no less! I expect I'll have to read her eventually just to see what the fuss is about.

And, of course, if you've never read any Terry Pratchett, you need to fix that.

Haha. That would be tantamount to sacrilege! Probably my favourite author. Although in a sense his books seem to fall into a qualitatively different category. They are just different enough in nature that they don't occur to me when I'm considering fantasy stories except as an afterthought.

Agreed, I would also recommend her Nightfall books. Just for the love of Bayes don't look at any of the other ones, especially the new ones unless you like characters bursting into tears every five pages.

Ok, that's the first wikipedia page on someone that looks like it was written for OkCupid:

Mickey Zucker Reichert is a pediatrician, parent to multitudes (at least it seems like that many), bird wrangler, goat roper, dog trainer, cat herder, horse rider, and fish feeder who has learned (the hard way) not to let macaws remove contact lenses. Also she is the author of twenty-two novels (including the "Renshai", "Nightfall", "Barakhai" and "Bifrost" series), one illustrated novella, and fifty-plus short stories. Mickey's age is a mathematically guarded secret: the square root of 8649 minus the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle with a side length of 33.941126.Mickey's claim to fame is that she has performed brain surgery and my parents really are rocket scientists.She has a heart of warm oatmeal for anything living, and cannot seem to say "no" to helping them. She (and her husband) have been foster and adoptive parents not only to children but also to every animal from mice to horses, including some of the weirder ones like large snakes, llamas, exotic parrots, a squirrel, opossums, foxes, pigs, lizards, hermit crabs, peacocks, turkeys, guineas, finches, songbirds, and even rats. They have drawn the line at elephants, although they did once have a Newfoundland and a Bernese Mountain dog. Most of their animals have come to them as finds, strays, and castoffs.

Based on your preferences here I would probably recommend Trudi Canavan over Mercedes Lackey for stronger female protagonist and more ass-kickery.

I've read (and liked!) the Black Magician trilogy. I've just looked up Trudi and noticed that as well as having a whole other series out there she lives not just in my country, or even my city. She lives in my very suburb. I expect geographical loyalty will make the series that much more enjoyable. :)

I should note that I don't actually mind male ass-kicking either, just with the former stipulations regarding naivety. The Eregion books, for example, were borderline. I cut them some slack because the author himself was a child. An awful lot of an author seeps through into their books.