“Most people think happiness is about gaining something, but it’s not. It’s all about getting rid of the darkness you accumulate.”Shit on a shingle! Have they invented a way of snorting a book's plot (line by line) while I was reading this? Because I need to read the next book, yesterday. I was full on prepared to take a couple of weeks break from this crazy-town series, I even had picked out my next read which I was looking forward to. But with that ending? Aaaaaarrrggghhhh!Packard and his team of Disillusionists have been working with Midcity Mayor Otto Sanchez in freeing Henji's prisoners reformed and disillusioned. There are two plot points in this installment: Justine working on disillusioning Ez, a coat-checker who invades people's dreams and turns them into sleepwalking cannibals (allegedly, Simon insists) and the search for the Dorks, a group of vigilantes who are hunting for highcaps.Yeah, I figured that's what you'd think about that. If you're not into Carolyn Crane's Urban Fantasy head trip of a series, all that sounds like a lot of crazy jibber jabber..... and you really need to get with the jibber jabber program.Double Cross felt very slow for me. I fell asleep a couple of times midway through. There's a lot of red herrings and the fact that you can't trust either Otto or Packard leaves you with Justine. And Justine's brain is a bit of a snoozer on this one. Otto is wayyy too quirky of a hero for me to root for and you kind of end up cheering on the Packard section of the stands by default. But that's oversimplifying this book. Because it's more than a love triangle. It's about absolute freedom, what makes good, good and what makes evil, bad. Which has been done over numerous times in numerous formulas. But I bet none at par with this book's imagination. Simon took a bit of a backseat on this one and Shelby's storyline was ho-hum. But that last 20%.... God! With a character like Sophie I should have expected that but I guess I was too busy falling asleep.I'm wondering if that was intentional on Ms. Crane's part because if it was...Surprisingly, this reminds me of reading Aleatha Romig's Consequences. Their plot and premise are world's apart but the holes they put in my stomach I think are pretty much in the same location.
