a weak Foundation

I was chuffed to see a new book by Mercedes Lackey about the Heralds of Valdemar. I was surprised that she called it Foundation; seems to me that there should be only one Foundation in SF/fantasy, and it isn't hers.* And then I was wearied by the poor editing. Mags, the hero, dreams of someday seeing those things he'd heard about, called "books". And then about twenty pages later, someone is reading a book to him, as they often do at mealtime. In other words, Lackey forgot that he had been longing to see a book - I suspect these two scenes were written well apart in time. And then about 30 pages later, Mags is tremendously excited to see a book for the first time. The same thing happens with a chalkboard/slate and chalk; it's a normal occurrence for his teachers to use chalk to write on the board when he is young, but when he arrives at the Collegium he has no idea what chalk is, and the concept of chalk and slate needs to be explained to him.
The plot itself is not terribly interesting - Mags is like Alberich, in that he has awkward turns of speech and a similar "only he sees the corruption at the Collegium" storyline.

*Yeah, I know. I'm a fuddy-duddy. And yes, of course, it's true that Asimov was not a great stylist himself. But still, I'd bet that in 30 years, more people are reading his Foundation than hers.