I haven't read any of the Lindholm stuff--it's all out of print in America, and thus rather hard to find--but I've heard it's rather less epic. Most of it is stand alone novels. I do read epic fantasy, although the epic-ness of it bothers me sometimes, and Robin Hobb is definitely my favorite epic fantasy writer. THis is partly because her books tend to be character driven, and partly because her books are considerably less epic than most epic fantasy, despite sometimes being as long (although she does confine them to trilogies, which fewer and fewer authors seem to be doing these days).