It’s the continuation of a stable enough story competently narrated.
I get the need to suspend disbelief for fiction. And can think of them as written o stand alone without the expectation that you have read a lot of this genre or even any other books in this series. However unless there is some sort of explanation like brain tumor or extreme fatigue then why is Ben or Joel not learning and avoiding that one river stop or the consumption at sanctuary (especially considering what just happened in the last book?!)
One more to go. Not enough to drop especially being part of Plus Library, but is getting a bit bleh.