This is definitely a rite of passage type novel, but in this case the rite is particularly nasty. A boy of fifteen changes into a man useful to his community. He wishes to have physical challenges - but why. The story is will hold you gripped in a vice. You will not like what is happening, but you will want to know how it happens. How does the boy in the first chapter become the man you meet in the second? Impossible to put this book down.