I can whip you up a hell of a fight scene and I won't need some fucking metaphor for that. Like sure I could start trying to impress you with my ability to make one thing seem like another but will you really care that I described the sun like it was a tangerine? If anything, you ought to be skeptical of my attempts to confuse the way you order your thoughts. It starts with street lights being will o' the wisps, and ends with you trying to eat your partner's lips because you heard me describe them as "ripe."
Instead, how about some cool fucking swords? Laser swords. Swords made of ice. How about a big ass sword with navigator stars all over it that you can shoot at anyone who manages to deflect the sword part, which is itself practically impossible because it's also an interdimensional sword that cuts only the flesh of narcissists? Writing is about coming up with the best swords, not prose. Publishers will be looking for your sword descriptions, so if you are serious about this whole writing thing you WILL cut it out with the prose and you WILL cut it IN with a cool angstrom-fiber blade.
I'm always impressed if an author can write an action scene that isn't boring as fuck. Joe Abercrombie can do it rather well. Most authors avoid them all together because it's notoriously hard to do.
I quite like Sanderson's, even though his prose is workmanlike at best.
Stackpole writes either amazing action scenes or terrible ones, depending on how you like his excruciatingly detailed descriptions of machinery blowing up.
It's funny just how contentious stackpoling is in the Battletech fandom.
Also depends on how much you enjoy the acrid smell of smoke and the rivulets of molten metal
The pizza delivery scene in Snowcrash is pretty impressive. Stephenson kind of irks me because he likes to let you know he's a pretty smart guy.
Some more authors who write violence particularly well - Jin Yong, Chester Himes, Lee Child