Blå Tornet (The Blue Tower) is a Swedish fantasy/SF novel by Denis Lindbohm.
As the story begins, our protagonist is a eleven year old novice in the priesthood of the totalitarian theocracy that rules the world.
The Guardian has been sleeping on the High Altar for over a thousand years. There are a lot of prophecies about how a chosen one will one day wake him. In the meantime, one of the worst blasphemies someone can commit is to touch The Guardian's holy sleeping body. It turns out that the artifact needed to wake the Guardian is in fact inside the altar: Only a blasphemer can heal the horrible wrong that happened so long ago, and lead the civilization back on the quest the creators had originally intended...
Has Examples Of
- Ancient Conspiracy: The protagonist founds one - The Order Of The High Altar. It becomes ancient only in the epilogue.
- Doublethink: The protagonist survive through his youth by developing this mindset. He is truly a heretic, but he is also a priest in a society hellbent on sniffing out all heretics and burying them alive. His solution is to never lie, a lie would eventually be discovered. Instead, he actively chose to believe in two simultaneous realities... and he quite incorrectly assume that everyone else is smart enough to pull off the same kind of dual reality. In reality, almost everyone else in his world is actually exactly as narrow-minded as they come across.
- God Is Flawed: The world was created by a guy who one day had a really bad cold. In his fever he happened to give his angels some really bad orders. Thousands of years of tragedy later, these are still in effect. And no, this is not Played for Laughs at all. Quite the contrary, actually.
- The Key Is Behind the Lock: The Guardian has been sleeping on the High Altar for over a thousand years. There are a lot of prophecies about how a chosen one will one day wake him. In the meantime, one of the worst blasphemies someone can do is to touch the Guardian's holy sleeping body. It turns out that the artifact needed to wake the Guardian is in fact inside the altar: Only a blasphemer can heal the horrible wrong that happened so long ago, and lead the civilization back on the quest the creators had originally intended.
- Medieval Stasis: Thanks to the theocracy killing everyone who is caught thinking for himself.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: The Order Of The High Altar guard the secrets of modern science and philosophy, while the world around them is stuck in Medieval Stasis.
- Soulsaving Crusader: The barbarism of the theocracy is initially presented this way. As the character finds out that the church is plain wrong about everything, the perspective drifts rather then flips. The church never comes across as evil. Instead, its superstitious beliefs and practices, including murdering innocent people for no good reason, comes across as horribly naive. Even adorable.
- The Starscream: Everyone should have seen that one coming, really. Guess even the Illuminati can be a bit naive after all.
