The Book Swede has a great post up about the use of magic in fantasy novels, specifically the recent trend toward epic fantasy that relies less heavily on magic as a plot device:

The move lately in fantasy seems to be towards grittier, darker works, with a lesser importance placed on magic. Take Brian Ruckley’s Godless World trilogy for example. Sure, magic users, the na’kyrim exist....The na’kyrim are dying out though, and a lot of modern fantasies have magic seen as a thing of the past -- of course, when a character who can do magic goes crazy, no one is prepared! The same goes with George R.R. Martin’s excellent A Song of Ice & Fire series, though there’s dragons in that, so an exclamation mark is obviously required!

Growing up reading fantasy books, the presence of some form of magic was always what intrigued me the most about the genre.  The Druid Fire and in-your-face sorcery of Terry Brooks's Shannara series appealed to me quite a bit, for instance.