I haven't read Goodkind (a highschool friend warned me off, and the commentary on Usenet did so again a few years later) so I can't speak to how bad his work is. Eddings I wouldn't recommend to anyone over 16, I agree. He's the kind of author you age out of pretty fast.

In GRRM's case, I might recommend Fevre Dream—his older standalone novel about vampires on the 19th-century Mississippi—rather than aSoIaF.