I think as an image it's great -- very artistic, and ties nicely to the visual style of Mistborn. The current website has an okay design but too many elements that seem disjointed (footsteps in the desert plus science fiction font?) or unclear (I don't know what the thing in the upper left is). So I think it's good to have a unified visual style, that's more obviously linked to your publications.
The general trade-off with this sort of splash image is that it's visually impressive for new users -- it does a good job "branding" you -- but obviously offers little for repeat visitors who know what content is available and just want to get to it. So part of the consideration should be the current and expected traffic patterns of the site, who the audience is and who you want it to be.
Some other considerations:
- How valuable are you finding the long column of text on the home page? If it's a pain to maintain and keep fresh, then this design that eliminates it makes sense. If you're finding it useful for announcing things like signing events and e-mail downtime, you may want to rework things to keep that space.
- Will your next released book be a Mistborn book? If not, there's a bit of the "built in obsolescence" factor to basing your site design solely on it to keep in mind.
- Will some variant of the top menu of the current site also be present, as well as the (simplified) left-hand navigation? I would hope so, as I think it's generally advisable to have consistent site navigation rather than forcing people to learn two different navigation methods, one for the home page and one for the rest of the site. The difficulty with the posted image is that none but your most frequent visitors will remember where each link is; it's difficult to scan something like that quickly and easy to overlook choices.
- A minor matter of personal taste: I don't like the way the "B" and "S" are intertwined...it's just a little hard to read. It makes the "B" look like an "R," and could also make people ignore the "S" and think your last name is "Anderson."
But as I said, I think in terms of visual style and execution it's very nice!
MattD