Ceramics are difficult to machine into complex shapes due to their high hardness and brittleness. In practical applications, ceramics often need to be jointed to themselves or metals. Traditional joining processes such as brazing and diffusion bonding are inefficient and costly, greatly limiting their practical applications. To solve the problems, current work explores the characteristics, applications, and prospects of unconventional and efficient joining techniques of ceramics. The joining processes are classified by heat sources, including resistance brazing, flash joining, laser welding/brazing, arc welding, and microwave joining. Additionally, current work provides solutions for resistance brazing of non-conductive ceramics, microwave joining of low dielectric loss ceramics, and laser welding of transparent ceramics. Among these techniques, USP laser welding is one of the most promising rapid joining techniques due to its ability to effectively reduce heat affected zone and residual stress.