[In the following review, Peaco faults Rule of the Bone for stretching the believability of its characters and plot.]

How much slack can you cut the author and narrator as they stretch credulity [in Rule of the Bone]? A 14-year-old boy named Chapman (“Chappie”), who later renames himself Bone, steals from family and mall stores, then quits school and home to deal marijuana to a biker gang. Mistakes force him to run from friends-turned-enemies until he joins I-Man, an elderly Jamaican Rastafarian, and Sister Rose, a homeless child, with whom he discovers familial love. Stretches for sure, but refreshing so far. Bone is the victim of still more social ills, enough to keep counselors and talk-show hosts busy for the rest of their lives: alcoholic mother, absent father, abusive stepfather, child-porn predator, dangerous friends, terrible luck, and wretched judgment. But he hardly ever whines. Instead, Bone endures and escapes, rattling through socioeconomic strata in convincingly madcap, picaresque sequences that lead to I-Man's ganja underworld in Jamaica. Bone not only helps propagate and market the product, he achieves through it a mystical-hallucinatory enlightenment to self-knowledge more powerful than any buzz ever attributed to a smoldering herb. But while hyperbole can be fun, manipulation usually is annoying. So my willingness to believe runs out as Bone bumps into his long-lost father in Montego Bay. In a touching ending in the shadow of the pileup of plot twists, Bone sails away, prospects as uncertain as ever, but his soul fortified by a little love. Like Huck Finn, Bone's slyly unsophisticated voice explores big questions like love, sex, crime, sin, race, class, and the fate of children in a fractured society. That voice, jabbering in slangs derived from metal, hip-hop, homelessness, and Rasta rap, creates a uniquely whacked-out yet profound linguistic experience, which is the main pleasure of the work.