Clock Hands by Marieke Nijkamp and Sylvia Bi. Greenwillow, 2026. 9780063027138. 282 pp. including an author’s note on guilds and strikes at the end.
In the port city of Siannera, it’s hard to get decent work if you’re not a member of a guild. And it’s hard to join a guild if you don’t have the money to become an apprentice. Vale is guildless. His family needs more money than he can earn. But one day he’s hired by a man and his daughter who are new to the city and are looking for a guide. The father doesn’t play by the guild rules; he starts repairing an abandoned tower, turning it into the city’s first astronomical clock, and eventually takes on Vale as an apprentice. The guilds are not happy. But Vale and the other guildless realize how much work they do (and how much power that gives them) and start to fight for change.
This graphic novel really swept me along. I liked how it showed both the good and the bad sides of organized labor, how it can be corrupt and also one’s only hope. It suggests how to create a way within an unfair system using collective action, but it also shows that doing so isn’t without costs.
This is a companion graphic novel to Ink Girls by the same authors.
