If you’re looking for something a bit more classic, I heartily recommend The Three Musketeers. Alexandre Dumas really had a gift for vivid writing. Musketeers is my personal favorite, but really, anything by Dumas is bound to have some gripping fights.
Sauron already touched on The Princess Bride, but there’s also the famous “Cliffs of Insanity” duel between Inigo Montoya and The Man in Black. Hell, at the end of the book the fight scene between Inigo Montoya and Count Rugen, and the fight scene between Westley and Prince Humperdinck–they’re all great!
I’ve only read one Salvatore book, The Demon Awakens, and I wasn’t very impressed. The basic plot and setting were fine, but Salvatore’s descriptions fell flat too often. One character is described as flailing his arms in the water like a robot. Another scene has a zombie with its arms constantly stretched out in front, but instead of lurching about it teleports without moving its legs. And the main character’s weapon really got on my nerves; it was a bow that could be used as a quarterstaff. Even if you allow some magic to keep the thing from breaking when you hit someone upside the head, a bow is not a good shape for a melee weapon, especially not a fancy recurve bow made by an old elven master.
I’ll second A Song of Ice and Fire, but my favorite duel was between Sandor and Lord Beric. The, ah, unusual circumstances make it quite tense. Arya is rather frightening, although I dunno if she gets in duels, exactly… and Dany vs. the, uh, well you better just find out for yourself.
Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books have a few good duels. There’s one where Princess Elspeth is armed with nothing more than a piece of broken pottery.
His Drizz’t fights are better and not nearly as oddball. Some of the ones he has with Mr Entreri are simply delicious.
Thanks smiling bandit, I thought I might have been the only person who ever read any RA Salvatore here!
And sturmhauke I have yet to read any of the RA’s other books. I’ve stuck to his Drizzt books, I think there is about 14 or so of them now. I would give the first two trilogy’s a chance (Icewindale and Dark Elf).
MtM
Fifty Grand by Ernest Hemingway because it’s real.
Icelandic sagas have very good battle scenes. My favourite is from Njal’s saga, the fight at the Markar river where Skarp Hedin jumps twenty feet down onto a frozen river, then slides toward his enemies, who are crossing at the ford, where he has to simultaneously jump over a shield someone skimmed at him and… you’ll have to read the rest because I haven’t figured out spoiler boxes yet.