YMMV / Cudjo's Cave

• Fair for Its Day: The book is a powerful and nuanced antislavery and anti-Confederacy tale that is far ahead of its time in condemning the attitudes behind secession and having the non-stereotypical Pomp be an assertive and powerful black man who fights back against white abusers, acts as an authority figure to several of his white abolitionist allies, and survives, but the native African Cudjo is the subject of some Condescending Compassion, even from Pomp, for his tribal religious beliefs, and fails to survive the book.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A scene where a pair of German Mooks (who their cousin Carl describes as having been flawed but not malicious before the war) working for a racist government torture a civilian and calmly and repeatedly fall back on how they are Just Following Orders can feel a lot more eerie after so many similar scenes with German soldiers eighty years later in World War II.