I'd probably recommend going with Abercrombie over Erikson. He's much more accessible as a writer and he does some really interesting cross-genre stuff (i.e. one of his books is basically a western in a fantasy setting). Everything he's written to date has been fantastic (well, I haven't read his latest stuff, a young adult series, but word is that it's good too). Erikson is also good, I'm not in any way saying not to read it, but I think Abercrombie would both have a wider appeal and probably be closer in spirit to GRRMs work.
If you have time for both I'd say read both...
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