Riverkeep

Fifteen-year-old Wulliam doesn't want to become the Riverkeep like his father before him, and his father before that: rowing the bata at night through the frozen river, lit only by whale-oil lamps, pulling out the decomposing bodies of those who have died there - suicides, murders, accidents.

However, when Wull's father is possessed by a malevolent spirit-creature, Wull learns that only another mythical creature, a deadly mormorach, might provide a cure. And a serpent-like mormorach has just been sighted - the first in a thousand years…

An utterly compelling and masterful young adult fantasy, Riverkeep swallows the reader whole from the first page, immersing them in its atmospheric, watery, ghostly world and keeping them gripped to the end. Highly recommended for any fan of Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman or Ursula Le Guin.