I used to read a lot of fantasy epics. I read the Lord of the Rings in about 4th grade, then, I think, the first two Shanara series in Middle School, and then half of existing Wheel of Time books in highschool, stopping exactly half way through part five when I realized that 
 1. I'd be reading them forever 
 2. I only barely cared about any of the huge cast anymore 
 3. I really hated potentially omnipotent portagonists 
 4. Clear good/evil dichotomies are really boring. 
 And so I left the classic fantasy epic form behind me. 
 That said, I will always love certain things that this book did have, namely: 
 1. imagination 
 2. the ability to build an interesting world and culture from scratch 
 Years later, I did dive into another fantasy epic, of a sort, China Mieville's very unconventional, very strange The Scar, which is actually readable as a no-commitment stand-alone. This is important, i think, and a nice contrast to the bloated epic that Eye of the World, however entertaining, kicked off.