I liked this one better than I'd expected (based on the reviews I read before reading the book). No, it isn't the big scoped space stuff we saw in the previous books. But it deals with the very realistic problems there always are when a group of humans colonizes a new piece of land. There's is the colonists, and the rich land owners, and the indigenous population, and the new land itself.
This story feels real. Yes, it is a bit inconsistent, but the human reactions feel authentic. Even if we could go anywhere in space, colonize new planets, we would still drag our human shit with us and our thin veneer of civilization would disappear very quickly.