I really want to see how this story ends. I liked this booka bit more than the previous books. 

The characters were good in general, I feel like this book showed how they've been growing throughout the books.

We also started the redemption arc of Queen Malina, so I'd like to see more of her growing into her powers and as a person. She has potential to be recognized as a respected royal, as she wished her whole life. However her spicy scenes are really cringey in my opinion, they felt awkward and forced.
I also hated the instalove of her story. They hate each other and in the next chapter they are kind of flirting and Malina starts acknowledging her attraction to the assassin (forgot his name, sorry).

Honestly, I think I also enjoyed this book more because I didn't have to read through the spicy scenes between Slade and Auren, since they were appart.
Yes, their scenes were good, but I guess I prefer fantasy without romance and spicy scenes in the way.
Now, that's just my opinion and preference.

Moving on to the story, everything was painfully obvious most of the time.

I think the only thing I wasn't expecting was Wick being also a Turley, but appart from that, I saw everything coming.
The author was giving us signals nonstop, specially about Slade's father and the oreans trapped in Lord Culls mannor being the "lost" inhabitants of (again, forgot the name) the hidden village crated because of the rip.  I feel like anyone paying a bit of attention to his backstory would have seen that coming. Also the fact of Auren and Slade being Päyur was obvious to me, so no surprises there

I hope Raven Kennedy give us a cool next book in which we can appreciate even more growth of the characters and also ve able to see everyone's power in the war. 
Hopefully things will not be as predictable as in this book, so it can get interesting. 

aurenslade shippers should be warned: they spent this entire book apart.

despite this, i thought gold was a strong addition to the plated prisoner series and i enjoyed it more than glow. the slow pace and dragged out storylines of the last book pay off. in gold, the readers get to reap the benefits of the connected dots (saira turley storyline + malina's disjointed travels throughout the kingdoms + slade's long backstory/flashback chapters), mainly through auren and malina's character development.

although auren in the main character of this series, i must admit, malina stole the show in book 5!