In short. Nothing.

I am no longer a big fantasy fan (ever since I read some Katherine Kurtz Dernyi novels - dreadful, avoid) so I haven't read much of the recent stuff (lets face it - it's all based on LoTR anyway particularly the Donaldson and Brooks stuff) but I will recommend a couple of thundering reads (and one or two to avoid), in no particular order...

1. Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Quartet - a young persons fantasy series but wonderfully realised and very profound.
2. John Crowley - Little, Big - more of a hermetic fairy story really but beautifully written and full of big ideas, my next favorite book to LoTR (unfortunately out of print now so good luck).
3. T H White - The Once and Future King - A wonderful treatment of the Arthurian myth.
4. Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Mists of Avalon - Another Arthurian novel, veers into romance a bit though.
5. Mervyn Peake - The Gormanghast Trilogy - Superbly written, great idea but some might find it overlong and claustrophobic - I love it but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
6. Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series - (ages since I read them so beware, they might not be as good as I once thought).

Avoid:

Katherine Kurtz - like watching paint dry but even more boring
Steven Donaldson - a lot of people like his stuff but I find it derivative and poorly written.
Terry Brooks - sorry, but it's the Lord of the Rings written by a machine.

I have become very suspicious of novels that never end (you know one book becomes a trilogy, then a quartet etc), apart from the classics I mentioned above there are very few that can hold attention throughout the series, most are padded out to sell more books.

But anyway - each to his/her own taste. :)