It’s omnibus week here in the Orbit Art Department, and the fangirl in me loves an omnibus. Get a whole story arc or series all in one giant go? Yes please! Today we have the cover launch for The Griffin Mage Trilogy by Rachel Neumeier, which collects Lord of the Changing Winds, Land of the Burning Sands, and Law of the Broken Earth.

I really enjoyed this series, it gave me a very Robin McKinley/Anne McCaffrey feeling and that’s a very good thing in my book. Classic heroine coming of age story, with a novel take on griffins, bringing them back to more wild animal (and wild magic) roots. I make no secret of my lack of griffin respect in their past fantasy incarnations, but I love that these griffins feel legitimately dangerous rather than cartoonish. That was the angle we took with the original covers, but I always love a chance to reinvent a cover for a new format, and here I think the cover gives the right feeling of menace, while still keeping Kes the center of the story.

After the jump, a teaser!

Griffins were creatures of fire, not earth.  No matter how destructive or dangerous they might prove to be, no creature of earth could send griffins back over the mountains.

Little ever happens in the quiet villages of peaceful Feierabiand.  The course of Kes’ life seems set:  she’ll grow up to be an herb-woman and healer for the village of Minas Ford, never quite fitting in but always more or less accepted.  And she’s content with that path—or she thinks she is.  Until the day the griffins come down from the mountains, bringing with them the fiery wind of their desert and a desperate need for a healer.  But what the griffins need is a healer who is not quite human . . . or a healer who can be made into something not quite human.