Read these 15 epic fantasy series about dragons

12. Dragon Jousters by Mercedes Lackey

Like Robin Hobb, Mercedes Lackey has a ton of different, sometimes interconnected series with different magic systems, casts of characters, and creatures. One of the things that sets Lackey’s dragon series apart is the amount of detail she put in to describing the physiology of these creatures, going to extreme lengths to imagine how they would behave if they actually existed. Lackey has a background as an avian expert and puts her knowledge to good use in Jousters.

So what is a realistic dragon like? Well, they don’t breathe fire and aren’t telepathic. And the way that they’re captured, or raised, reflects how real-life war animals might have been handled in ancient times.

Dragon Jousters is a four-part series that follows Vetch, a slave who dreams of being a dragon jouster and begins raising his own dragon in secret. The world of the story is based on Ancient Egypt, with two warring nations that rely on dragonriders as specialty troops that can pick up enemy soldiers and drop them to their death. To combat this, each rider is also equipped with jousting gear so that they can knock the enemy jousters off their mounts.

Which sounds kind of fun, really. Maybe not so much if you’re at the wrong end of the lance, but still…