Myth doesn’t knock in this book; it leaves bodies on your doorstep and calls it an invitation.
David H. Millar’s Dragons, Demons & Demigods opens in mythic prelude, dragon-queen Bráchthine laying twin eggs under the shadow of a prophecy and extracting a promise from Nuadha, High King of the Tuatha Dé, to protect her daughter Clíodhna (and to keep the son from becoming a civil-war fuse). Then it snaps to 1940 Belfast, where “Clío” (the same Clíodhna, glamoured into a young woman) wakes from demon-haunted dreams and tries to live a rough-and-ordinary life with “Lazarus” (Nuadha in disguise) until two dead girls appear on their doorstep bearing a thorny rose sigil and the supernatural starts leaning hard on the wallpaper of the everyday.
From there, the book cracks open into the Land of Immensity, Tuatha Dé courts, Fomorian schemes, artefacts like Daghdha’s Cauldron, and the dragons’ Arena, until Clío is forced to stop being an unanswered question and become a queen in full view of enemies, allies, and gawkers who suddenly want her bloodline to mean something.
I really enjoyed how textured the story is. Millar’s Belfast is not a generic “gritty city” stage-set; it’s weather, vinegar, coal smoke, trams, the social physics of working-class streets, and a heroine who is both ancient and impatient in a way I found oddly endearing. Clío’s voice is brash, horny, funny, and occasionally raw enough to sting; she swears the way some characters pray, and the book lets that be characterization rather than decoration. Even when the plot turns cosmic, the story keeps dragging its boots through real human spaces, parlours, doorsteps, police stations, so the magic feels less like glitter and more like a hidden engine finally grinding into view.
The worldbuilding is exuberant, sometimes gloriously so. We’re handed names, bloodlines, artefacts, factions, and ancient grudges with the confidence of a bard who assumes you can keep up (and often you can, because the momentum is real). When it lands, it lands big: the political venom of the Tuatha Dé, the Fomorians’ hunger for leverage, and the dragons’ brutal legalism converge into set pieces that feel like ceremonial violence, beautiful and appalling at once. The Arena chapters, in particular, have that “watching history be made with teeth” sensation; I caught myself wincing and reading faster.
Dragons, Demons & Demigods is for readers who like urban and historical fantasy, Celtic mythology, dark fantasy, and mythic adventure with adult edges, sex, profanity, and violence that aren’t coy about being there. If you enjoy the modern-myth collision of American Gods, but you want it less highway-trip dreamy and more Belfast-brick immediate, more “portal in the parlour” than “omen on the open road,” Millar’s approach will likely scratch that itch.
If you’re the sort of reader who likes a heroine who becomes dangerous not by being chosen but by being cornered, you’re in the right place.
Editorial Review by Literary Titan, March 2026
Read the complete review here: https://wp.me/p3cyvH-MOX
