Alan Campbell: Iron Angel

Second book in Campbell's "Deepgate Codex" series. It did not have particularly good reviews on Amazon, but I was sufficiently curious about the fates of two of the protagonists of the first work, Rachael and Carnival, to get it anyway.
I have to agree with the reviews; Campbell's vision is one that would work quite well on the big screen, but the plot is muddy and the book is sloshing through a vividly imagined hell, literally, which gets old before the half-way mark. Further, it doesn't actually develop Carnival any further; apart from a ten-second cameo she doesn't figure in at all.
This book ends on more of a cliff-hanger than the first volume, but in light of the reviews on Amazon for the third and final installment, I hesitate to bother. I still want to know what happens to the characters, but I'm not sure I want to follow Campbell's treatment of them rather than just make up my own. He also introduces two more interesting characters, to further add to the expectations of the final book.
Two out of five; mostly due to the muddy plot and the feeling of things constantly going from bad to worse.