Lord Dunsany is a early and pretty good weird fantasy Author. His short stories run the gambit from Fantasy, Horror and Hashish.
He wrote stories about elven princesess many years before Tolkien.
As far as good ole H.P.L. I hear where you are coming from. His writing style and stories are definatly not for everyone. I'm a pretty big fan of Lovecraft and the writers he befriended in the jaz age. Right now I'm on a Robert E. Howard binge, very different from H.P.L. I feel Howard's stories have less of the issues you mentioned.
AS far as Fantasy I've read but disliked.... well I've got a love/hate relationship with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I loved the initial first four or five books. After a while I got pretty pissed that he was ignoring the main characters and to a degree the main plot.