Any fantasy books to recommend?

Hi All,

I recently met a colleague at my work place that I don't see very often because she's always out of the country for work purposes. The last time I met her was a good 2 months ago and I thought it'll be a nice idea to get her something before she comes back. I know she's an avid reader of fantasy books and have read a prologue of one of the books she'd loaned to me for an afternoon. Unfortunately, I have no knowledge of fantasy genre books and neither can I remember the author of the book. What I do remember is that there was magical powers, dark and mythical characters and didn't involve romance. So I did some research and that would fall into the category of fable and mythic fantasy but I wanted a a personal opinion of any book that someone had read instead of books that the website was trying to sell.

Any ideas?

Many thanks

The Mortal Instrument and Sevenwaters Series are my favorite so far. A link removed of the first book from the Mortal Instrument series is coming out next year in August.