Don't worry, there might still be delays...
Seriously, I do have a small amount of worry about them rushing it. I've read TOKYOPOP's release of
Scrapped Princess,
Crest of the Stars, and the first short story in
Kino No Tabi. While I thought
Scrapped Princess was ok (though, truthfully, the anime wasn't all that good either... IMO

) and what little I read of
Kino No Tabi so far was very, very good,
Crest of the Stars had some wierd word usage. Like the characters become surprisingly informal at inappropriate situations. And
Crest of the Stars is *very* heavy on the use of Baronh (the language created by the author for this series), which may have caused some issues with the translation.
The Twelve Kingdoms is probably closer to
CotS than
KNT, especially since the latter is actually a series of loosely connected short stories, rather than long, multi-novel arcs.
TTK also has the local word usage, though most of it is really adaptations from the Japanese/Chinese by the looks of it (I.E.,
Hourai and
kirins are existing Japanese concepts).
Still, the first
Crest of the Stars novel was a very good read. Even with the wierd word usage, the novel had what was at the heart of what drew me into the anime: the dialog. I can at least hope the same for
The Twelve Kingdoms, that the heart of the novels is able to bridge across the language barrier.