It is a Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story about the 14-year-old American narrator, Chappie, later dubbed Bone (named for a tattoo that he gets), who, after having dropped out of school, turns to the guidance of a Rastafarian Jamaican migrant worker.

The novel is split into two halves: the first concerns his family struggles in America, and the second describes his experiences in Jamaica.

Bone, although a hardened drug dealer on the outside, is revealed to be quite compassionate, wanting to free an abused girl named Froggy from her captor and to return his mentor I-Man back to his home.

He is a Rastafarian migrant worker living illegally in upstate New York, in an old school bus that has been emptied and fixed up.

Bruce is the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang, Adirondack Iron, which is based in Russ's apartment above the Video Den, where Bone stays when he first runs away from home.

Many different reviewers compared Rule of the Bone to other coming of age novels such as Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye.

In one article, Ed Peaco gave praise to the novel by saying, “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.”[3] Critics admired Banks’ style with one quoting: “...When it inhabits the cooly [sic?]

In the book review from The Nation's Jess Mowry states: “...Unfortunately [it's] jumbled together like The Hobbit gets Kidnapped by Peter Pan on Treasure Island.