THE SLEEPING GODDESSESA Dark Epic Renaissance Fantasy Saga
Medici meets Martin — a Renaissance Game of Thrones
The Goddesses Saga — Complete Tetralogy
"Power belongs to men. Divinity belongs to women.
And the goddesses are waking."
by Alex Tarapowski
READ THE CHAPTER THAT STARTED IT ALL
One night. One betrayal. One man who saw it coming — too late. Before the Scaliger brothers were exiles, their father Francis ruled Ragusa's harbour from a palace of white stone and old wine. He knew the debts were mounting. He didn't know his wife was the one who opened the door. Sign up to receive the exclusive prequel chapter — free.
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THE GODDESSES SAGA
Power belongs to men. Divinity belongs to women. The goddesses are no longer asleep.
Love, betrayal, naval battles, blood magic, eldritch horrors, and the slow return of goddesses this world had learned to live without.
For three centuries, Hecate the Three-Faced has ruled through blood and faith. The twelve goddesses she defeated were never killed. They were buried. Drowned. Sealed beneath stone and silence. Now, one by one, they are waking — and they have not forgotten who put them there.
Three exiled brothers. A young woman who smiles at court by day and runs a gladiator stable and a spy network by night. A continent torn open by bloody religious war. Cathedrals burning. Ancient goddesses demanding sacrifice. The dead walking in mirrors and dreams.
In a world where magic belongs exclusively to women, thrones mean nothing without divine favor. Spymasters, warrior-priestesses, and empire-builders in silk — the women of this saga wield power that kings can only fear.
The goddesses never give freely. They have come, at last, to collect.
For readers of Joe Abercrombie, George R.R. Martin, Guy Gavriel Kay, and R.F. Kuang.
THE SLEEPING GODDESSES
Young Beatrice Feski smiles at court and listens. Beyond the palace walls, she's an entrepreneur, spymaster's protégée, and owner of a gladiator stable. In a world where magic belongs only to women, she's learned to wield steel, gold, and secrets instead. When a bloody palace coup tears the city apart, Beatrice makes a choice that binds her fate to three brothers, heirs of a dynasty torn from power. Their father murdered in his own hall. Their stepmother opened the gates to the enemy. Someone wants the Scaliger name erased from history — and the brothers are walking into a trap they can't see. A mysterious bond forms between Beatrice and the middle brother — shared dreams, foreign memories, visions that feel like prophecy. Because a holy war is brewing. Hecate the Devourer has ruled for three centuries — but the vanquished pagan goddesses are waking, whispering to the desperate, choosing champions, demanding sacrifice. And they never give freely.
THE REBEL GODDESSES
Beatrice Feski no longer smiles at court and listens. The Scaligers are restored, the city is theirs, and the cupbearer who saw the old admiral murdered now carries a vow, a network, and a goddess at her shoulder — and the war the brothers have started cannot be won without her. But the throne the brothers have taken is not the prize they thought it was. A cathedral burns in a neighbouring city. Children sing inside the flames. Across the strait, mobs hunt strangers through the streets of her own city. Half a continent is choosing sides between an ancient three-faced devourer and twelve goddesses who slept three hundred years. Mark sees the faces of his dead in every mirror — and tomorrow they will crown him in the name of goddesses no one has openly worshipped for three centuries. Emile rides toward an island in the mist where the moon waits for him in human form, and beyond it, paths between worlds no living mortal has walked. Sebastian rides with Beatrice — toward a city of masks and water, where the man who killed their father waits, and where the bond they share will be tested in ways neither can name. And in a black-eyed child standing on a sunlit balcony, the oldest enemy of every goddess says a single sentence: one of your puppies will die soon. Beneath the war of crowns, an older war is waking. The Twelve will strike first. The Three-Faced One is already rising to meet them. The goddesses never give freely.
THE GODDESSES' CRUCIBLE
A goddess fell in fire to buy them their victory. A goddess walked into the dark and did not return. The dead are walking — in mirrors, in dreams, in the mouths of those who loved them. In the old realm of Irkalla, where Hecate sealed a sister of the Twelve three centuries ago, a door has begun to open. Beatrice runs a network across three nations and a court case that may turn the wealth of the world. Tonight a goddess walks a rope above ten thousand kneeling strangers, and Ishtar calls her by name — then an old man in a velvet doublet pours her wine and asks for three small favors. Three impossible tasks. Three lives to spend. And the only road home to the man she has not finished a sentence with. Sebastian has crossed a winter sea without telling her, walking to his death to keep a promise made to a dying friend, and now stands on a wall that will not hold. Mark wears a crown his father would not have recognised and signs orders his father would not have signed. The green eyes of a woman across the council table measure him every time he speaks. To win the war he will give up something very dear. He has not yet admitted what. Emile descends into the underworld in search of the woman he loves, the one the world believes dead. The dead do not welcome the living. But the dead, sometimes, remember. When spring comes, count the crowns. Then count the wearers. The goddesses never give freely.
THE GODDESSES' WAR
This is the war the Twelve slept three hundred years to fight. This is the war the Three-Faced One has been hungering for since the first prayer rose toward the wrong sky. A continent is burning. Armies have marched where no army has marched in living memory. A siege closes around a city that should have fallen and somehow still stands. The cult of the Three-Faced One and the rising faith of the Twelve fight their last war on the streets and in the temples of every city of the continent — and at last, at last, the skies above them have begun to answer. Greater battles than the saga has yet seen. Deeper magic than mortal stone was built to hold. A love that has cost more than either of them knew they had to spend, and is not finished asking. Brothers who must decide, before the last hour, whether the men they have become are still men they can live with. Goddesses who must learn, at last, what they are willing to give for those who love them. And a devourer of worlds who has waited long enough. Some will keep their crowns. Some will keep their names. Some will keep their hearts. No one will keep all three. When the last bell tolls and the smoke clears over the Jeweled Sea, the world that remains will not be the one any of them set out to save. It may, however, finally be theirs. The goddesses never give freely. They have come, at last, to collect.
"In the sun-drenched merchant republic of Ragusa, three brothers swear vengeance — while beneath the marble palaces, ancient goddesses stir from centuries of slumber."
A WORD FROM BEATRICE FESKI
"Not every review comes from this world."
Beatrice Feski is a character from The Sleeping Goddesses
THE WORLD OF THE JEWELED SEA
"The Isthmus and the Jeweled Sea — where merchant princes rule and ancient goddesses sleep"
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex Tarapowski was born in Africa to a Soviet diplomat's family, which may explain why he has never been able to stay in one place — or under one flag — for long.
A historian by training, he spent years between archaeological digs, library archives, and the Mediterranean coastlines where empires left their bones. The combination left him with a deep appreciation for the way civilizations rise, betray their ideals, and crumble — usually in that order.
The idea for The Sleeping Goddesses came to him in the ruins of forgotten Italian colonies on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean — places where great Venetian houses once ruled the sea, made fortunes, betrayed each other, and vanished. The Scaligers and the Cornaros really existed. They ruled. They fell. Today they survive only in a few old chronicles of Verona and Venice. He wanted to give them a second life — under different skies, on different seas, with older goddesses watching from the dark.
He started writing the first chapters in 2020, set them aside for several years while life pulled him elsewhere, and returned to the manuscript with the conviction that the saga deserved to be finished as a single, complete work. Rather than release it volume by volume across uncertain years, he chose to write the entire tetralogy first, so readers could follow the story from coup to reckoning without waiting between books.
He currently lives in Europe, moving to a new country every two or three years. His wife loves it. His three children do not.
The Sleeping Goddesses is his debut dark epic fantasy series.