Oh RIGHT I forgot to mention that, what was up with all the infodumping?? I felt like this happened a bunch, where the character would end a chapter on a ~plot cliffhanger~, and then in the next chapter instead of actually writing about what happened the character would be doing something else entirely and then remember "oh yeah, here is the resolution of the cliffhanger." It was weird!

That's a literal description of the entire plot structure of Foundation, and I love Foundation, so that's not the problem to me. I'm fine with that structure, if it has good storytelling motivation. The problem is that in Foundation those resolutions are genuinely unexpected, complicated puzzles involving a deeply constructed worldbuilding scenario, whereas in the Interdependency the twists are just unmotivated junk to keep the plot sort of moving.