A review by ergative
A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly

3.0

Hmmmmmm. I like the scene setting of 1830s New Orleans. I can't speak to how accurate it is, but it feels like Hambly did the research. There's a very telling moment, when a mixed-race woman is murdered, and the police inspector says that 20 years ago, back when New Orleans was French, the white man who did it would have been prosecuted, and 20 years from now, no one would be prosecuted because she's coloured; but right now, at that moment, he didn't know what the justice system would decide to do. The switch from French control, in which mixed race people have respect in society, to American control, in which the fine distinctions between black and colored are no longer respected and everyone turns into n**rs, is pretty grim. The modern reader knows where it will end, and the characters can see it happening. But still, when Benjamin January reflects that New Orleans is his home, and for that reason decides not to go back to France, I kept thinking, 'wrong decision, my friend. It's only going to get worse.'