A Riverkeep's job is to clear debris from the river and light oil lanterns to heat the water and prevent it from icing over. He rescues the living who fall into its depths, and retrieves the dead. All his life, Wulliam Fobisher has reluctantly trained to become the new Riverkeep of Scotland's Danék River on his 16th birthday. Mere days before he comes of age, Wull helps his strong, capable Pappa retrieve a dead body that, when Pappa gripped it, "hugged back." After this bizarre attack, Wull's father becomes host to a dangerous parasite, leaving him with cloudy eyes, a gurgling voice and an insatiable appetite for fish heads.
When Wull hears a mormorach, an immense eel-like sea monster has surfaced in nearby Canna Bay, he sees a longshot chance to slay it and, as folklore suggests, use its fluids as a cure for Pappa. He sets out in their small rowboat, and is soon joined in his mission by Mix, a young thief; Tillinghast, a smart-mouthed homunculus; and Remedie, a prim witch. Ahead of the motley crew waits a vicious whaling captain bent on taking the mormorach for himself at any cost. On the surface, one might call Riverkeep "Huck Finn fights Captain Ahab with help from Frankenstein's monster."
The chemistry between the characters makes for plenty of snappy banter, and the plot swiftly flows with constant fights, flights and some slapstick hilarity. Glaswegian author Martin Stewart's atmospheric riverboat ride is a dark delight, a rollicking adventure of fathers and sons, monsters and magic, and the choices that make us human. --Jaclyn Fulwood, lead librarian at Del City Public Library, Okla.