I wonder whether it's an early novel dusted off for resale, rather than simply quickly written and turned in one draft too early. Either way, under-editing was involved.

And under-thinking, judging only from your comments not having read the book. (God forgive me for slagging someone on such slim acquaintance, but the target looks large and safe.)

As a knock-on, I wonder: is it really safe to turn in, or even to shop, an unready draft? Suppose you'd written that and turned it in, and the editor said "Great! I'll buy it! We have a slot in ten months!" but if you said you wanted to do a rewrite (and edit the sucker) the slot wouldn't be there for, oh, twenty-four months. What would you do?