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We explore Deepgate's world through several characters - most of them ranging from repulsive to evil to terrifying to grotesque. There is Presbyter Sypes, a priest maintaining the lie in order to protect the city. There is Devon, the Chief Poisoner, a sadistic chemist maddened by pain and grief, reaching for god-like status with a supreme arrogance of a scientist. Certain Mr Nettle, a lout hell-bent on reclaiming his killed daughter's soul. Rachel, a temple assassin, assigned to protect the innocent Temple angel, Dill; and her reluctant charge himself. The last two are the most human and most likely to provide the hook for the reader, so important when reading books like that, but all the playing characters - even the renegade psychopathic angel - are drawn with excellent depth and richness.
The city of Deepgate itself is a character, too, and perhaps the most compelling one. It unravels itself in front of us with great confidence, the exposition is completely natural, without breaking the structure of the novel at all. Alive but somehow decaying, swaying on its powerful foundation chains, centred on the mighty Temple, surrounded by hostile tribesmen whom it fights with poison gas, biological weapons and fire but always looking to the abyss and the Hoarder of Souls in there '' an entire culture waiting to die, eager to be consumed by the darkness beneath their feet''. It's all rather dark and gothic, with echoes of Peake's [[''The Gormenghast Trilogy]]'', vampire stories, Clive Baker, even Lovecraft and at a stretch, somehow, Blake's [[Songs of Innocence and of Experience]]. The mood is realised brilliantly, without overtly florid description, it comes from glimpses of images, smells, peoples' sayings; and by the choice of language too, from names to adjectives to chapter titles.
Deepgate is dark, foreboding, industrial city belching smoke and fighting its enemies with plague, poison and fire, but also morally corrupt through what lies at its foundation. Redemption is hinted at, but so far only very vaguely hinted: I suspect there is room for that in the later volumes of the ''Deepgate Codex''. Campbell takes his idea to its logical conclusion by showing how core beliefs of a culture would shape the way it conducted all kinds of tasks, from technology to war. Some of it is pretty stomach churning, but not particularly gratuitous. The reader winces, but accepts that that's how things must be in that city of chains. I don't like horror, and thus I didn't like the moments when the "dark fantasy" mode risked turning into the horror, but overall it stayed this side of the genre divide.