Cover Art: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Cover artist: Cliff Nielsen
Author: N.K. Jemisin

I quite like this cover. It has a rather ornate and mysterious touch that isn't too imposing. I also like that the title is located beneath the image.

This is the first book in The Inheritance Trilogy, which comes out in February 2010:

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with a pair of cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother’s death and her family’s bloody history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate — and gods and mortals — are bound inseparably.

Cliff Nielsen has an excellent selection of his work here.