There's definitely some kind of plot building in the background with how all these events seem to be connect to this "river." The dialogue on page 21 implies that, whatever is causing these events, it's increasing in scale somehow.It's pretty rare for me to feel like a story just goes on for the sake of it, if there is some greater plot thread or important build up on this, it seems to elude me completely. To be honest this could just be a series of loosely connected (by a observer protagonist) oneshots.