The problem is casting all those HashMap<Object> and List<Object> into their respective types... instead of parsing a json string, it means parsing an object hierarchy... at first I thought maybe through the streaming api, but there's no writer... and dsl's might be too much overhead.
I think if I run into too many problems w/ it, i'll just switch to JsonRPC, which should be MUCH easier to handle w/ Klaxon... thanks anyways!