I sure hope it comes back to haunt them (for the sake of the story, that is ). Having magic be so exclusive and scarce is a smart decision, though one does suspect that sooner or later we'll get to a point where that ceases to be the case.

Yeah, the punch moment wasn't bad, but again, Vorchenza's utter lack of established credentials weakened it. It's one thing to pull something like that on for instance Lady Olenna Tyrell, and quite another to do it on an old lady who has demonstrated very little skill or awesomeness other than happening to have a very capable intelligence service working for her. The elevator jump read like classic James Bond - one of the too rare moments in the closing chapters that did.

Yeah, facing them both separately gives you twice as many showdown scenes to play with, I guess, but also rather reduces the challenge - without his sisters or his Falconer, the Grey King is nothing but a not particularly talented pirate, and not even that good with his blades if Locke's performance is anything to go by.

Yeah, agreed, the sinking of the gold ship was one of the stronger elements.

I would say no, not so much for plot reasons as for thematic reasons. In thematic terms, pretty much the whole point of the book is that the "family" you create for yourself with your close friends can be as strong and more so than actual blood ties, with the Gentleman Bastards considering themselves a family. It would be pretty lame if Lynch then suddenly decided to make Locke's father someone important, and make a big deal out of blood ties after all. Though I could see a "Pirates of the Caribbean"-style father-son reunion, or something like that - Chekhov's gun does tell us that there's a very high probability of Locke's father surfacing one way or another. But, as you say, he could intentionally subvert that cliché.

As for his true name, I got the impression it wasn't a big deal, just something extremely flowery. Although I suppose it could still be revealed at some point, like Inspector Morse's (I'm certainly putting comparisons to a very combination of narratives in this post...).

I didn't consciously recall much of the plot when rereading, honestly. Subconsciously, maybe, but I'm more inclined to think that I've just grown a bit more critical as a reader since the last time I read this (which I'd guess was about five years ago).