When I picked this up, I expected to really enjoy it. After all, I like Mercedes Lackey's writing, and it had been a long time since I had read any good dragon-focused fiction. Sadly, it seems as if Lackey lifted this story from one of my favorite series of all time- The Pit Dragon Trilogy by Jane Yolen.

Although I will admit that the whole dragon and his boy theme is old as dirt, reading Joust was more like deja-vu than I ever could have imagined. Both stories take place in dry, arid locations and focus on a serf/slave boy who finds work with dragons and eventually befriends one and raises it and trains it to fight. This story is so similar to Dragon's Blood (which I read more than ten years ago), that I honestly had to keep reminding myself they were different books. I will say that after the first book both stories go off in different directions, but at the beginning they're almost like carbon-copies of each other. It's true that Lackey's book is more political, is meant for an adult audience and is set in a very Egyptian land, but for me, that really wasn't enough of a difference.

If I hadn't read Heart's Blood years ago, I may have rated this book higher than I did, because it's not a bad book, it's just unoriginal. But I really enjoy when authors put a twist on an old story and make it their own, and I really didn't see that happen in Joust. Fact of the matter is, I've heard this story before, and Yolen told it much better. With that in mind, I really can't rate it more than a two, because...well, it comparison, "it was (just) okay".

Although none of the books in the series were AWFUL enough to recieve 0 or 1 star, I would say that this is the best one of the series. Unfortunately, as is typical of Lackey, the further she gets into this series, the less interested I become. I've read the first four, but after reading the last one I don't think I have any intention of reading any more about the dragon jousters.