Agreed. I really like the engineering behind V8, but the interface is such a pain to work with. I actually switched my game from C++ to the JVM so I could use Rhino.
V8 is quite powerful, don't get me wrong. But, it requires a bit more knowledge of C++ to use and use well, and sometimes that can be a bit much. Also, if you're exporting functionality via a static library, you really don't always want to use anything other than vanilla C.
Would you mind elaborating a bit what makes v8 tedious to work with?