THE GREAT EASTERN

THE GREAT EASTERN is a sprawling, lavish anticolonial adventure novel, set in the 1850s-1870s in New York, London, Paris, India, and the North Atlantic. Pitted against each other: the two great 19th-century anti-heroes, Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab – one who lives beneath the waves and hates everything upon them, one who lives upon the waves and hates everything beneath. Caught in between: the very real-life Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the preeminent civil engineer of Victorian England, here kidnapped, pressed into service to build Nemo his submarine, then to join him in his battle against the modern world.

PRAISE & REVIEWS 

“The novel The Great Eastern is the ultimate confluence of the nineteenth century, its technological advances, anti-heroes, and crimes. Howard Rodman’s swashbuckling adventure pits Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab against Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo in a very real struggle for the future. Rodman weaves his sly picaresque around the actual story of the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the century’s greatest ship, and its mission to lay down the Transatlantic cable forever linking the great colonial powers of the time.”
–Walter Mosley

“An absolutely ingenious premise propels this audacious adventure into surprising and thrilling territory, where history twists and braids itself like the transatlantic cable at the heart of this epic narrative. Howard Rodman’s powers of invention, connective synthesis, and grim humor are matched only by his literary ventriloquism and psychological insight. Seems to me this kaleidoscopic tall tale is a ready-made binge-read!”
–Steven Soderbergh

“A weird and wondrous adventure, chock full of rich, commanding prose detailing the clash between arrogant geniuses of considerable ego, and the historical ripples such a clash imparts. Reminiscent in all the best ways of Robert McCammon’s Matthew Corbett books.”
–Chuck Wendig

“Three cheers for Howard Rodman’s ripping steampunk adventure, The Great Eastern! Outrageous linguistic brio gives pleasure line by line, while the story, an epic battle between two 19th century archvillians–Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab–keeps the pages flying. A tour de force fantasy where science meets human obsession.”
–Janet Fitch

“Howard Rodman’s The Great Eastern is a book of confabulations, real and imagined. Surprises on every page. A splendid and notable achievement.”
–Ricky Jay

“Seriously, this is the sort of thing that readers of China Mieville or Alan Moore or Eleanor Catton should gobble up (it also has hints of my beloved George MacDonald Fraser, but I realize that’s not a name anyone throws around anymore). A historical phantasmagoria and ripping adventure done as a game of hide-and-seek. It’s like twelve of your favorite movies at once, in full sensurround.”
–Jonathan Lethem

“For anyone with a weakness for Herman Melville, Jules Verne, 19th century nautical hijinx, or just a helluva great story, The Great Eastern is for you.”
–Jake Gyllenhaal

“Here be port of embarkation for the SS Rodman as it sets sail above and below the waves of modern imagination. First mate Melville is in the crow’s nest, eyes full of blue sky and white monsters, and navigator Verne is submerged in deep whirlpools of the teardrop hull no seafarer has plumbed. Not another scrivener alive or dead but Rodman – lyrical and witty, erudite and passionate, dare we say rapturous, dare we say obsessed – could have charted let alone helmed this singular, exhilarating flying-dutchman of an epic.”
–Steve Erickson

“Wildly inventive and richly imagined historical fiction that mashes up fact with the fantastic to create a singular, original reading experience. I loved it.”
–Mark Haskell Smith