The focus of novel Fairest is on singing and beauty, the latter of which is a prime subject in this novel's inspiration, Snow White. The focus on beauty not being the most important thing was nice; there's a lot of pressure on people, especially girls, to be attractive and deviating from that was a lovely surprise. Queen Ivi was a nicely developed character that avoided the pitfalls of the evil-for-the-sake-of-evil queen; her complexity was refreshing. 
 Ijori is a very simplistic character, both generic and cliche. His romance with main character Aza is rushed and unbelievable at times - it happens very quickly and readers don't really see their relationship develop at all. Ijori is nice for the sake of niceness and lacks any further complexity.