The Golden Sands, Redux!

[msa]

Well, I decided to take on two mapping projects, both larger in scale than any I've done before. Stupid me! I'll be plugging away on this one slowly but surely, but I wanted to get some feedback on it.

I'm converting the map that won me the lite challenge over from a realistic-style map over to a hand drawn one. So far I've only managed the coastlines, rivers, and a small section of mountains. This is meant to be printed on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper--I'd like a version that I can print and give to players during the game.

My main question is the mountains: do they look ok? They are sort of like some styles I've seen, but deviated from them a lot. I've intentionally made them evocative of pyramids and sand dunes to mesh with the arabia/egyptian feel of the world. I also decided to shade the valleys instead of doing a more natural lighting source, but I'm not sure I like it. An alternative would be to shade them as if the light was coming from the northeast.

For comparison, here is the original map:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=5622

The hand-drawn version is a *lot* more time consuming so I am hoping for some feedback before I go too far down a bad path.