Will the resistance succeed? Will true love triumph? 

Comments
I assume the author is a girl. 

When I went to the website containing this story, I saw the poster and was a little excited at the prospect of the story. Turbulent Years is a title that truly represents the story at its most basic; war and love. When I saw the Cast list, I was thinking this author could really cast the right person in the right role, if this story was ever made into a series or a movie. When I saw the sub-titles to the Chapters, I was intrigued. When I went further and looked at the time this story was set, that is 1945, just about the time America would bomb the hell out of the "Carrot Tops", I was excited. Shanghai was such a good place to set the story in, since it was occupied by China, it was the financial centre of the old China and there were  a lot of refugees and foreigners there to add some spice into the story. One won't scream with inconsistencies when we read about a Japanese girl wandering around the Shanghai streets since Japanese were there. This story has the making of a truly ambitious and exciting story, full of betrayals, deaths, gore, blood, inter-racial love, and so much more.

And then I saw the first chapter and I was utterly and truly disappointed. Two reasons for this which made me dislike the structure of the story. The story is good, the way it was presented is not that good.

First of all, I have a 15" monitor and a shield in front of the screen to protect my oh-so vulnerable eyes. Any font lesser than 10pt will have me squinting my eyes. This story has ok fonts, but the biggest problem will be the colour of the font. I should have known. The background is pitch black and so the most logical colour of a font should have been white, but the author chose one type of blue that made it so hard for me to read the words. I had to highlight the words to read it. On a normal day with the usual lazy Funn Lim, I would have not be bothered to read the story, but since I was given such a polite invitation, I felt it would be great injustice to deny myself a good story by refusing to read it for the flimsiest reason. But the truth is, the colour of your font is as important as your story, more important than your layout. My eyes still hurt from squinting my eyes and I hope, if the author ever reads this and is in need of a good advice, change the colour of the font to white or change the background to white. This will make reading your story a much more pleasant experience.

And so I ignored the irritating font colour, and I read the story. I was a bit disappointed that the author adopted the "script" approach, omitting some essentials that I feel could have made this story even better.

Her story structure is as such;

Except for Chapter 9 which talks about the death of a character that we know, but not too well, all other chapters are basically as such. It reminds me of a script, except that the author tries to inject some emotion into it with the [emotion]. I find the whole story very emotionally detached.

One very obvious example is the conversation between General Lee, his daughter Yuk Tung and his playful and happy son, Ting Fung. I wouldn't say it was badly written but in my mind I was imagining an actor reading the dialogue of General Lee and the whole thing seemed so out of place, so unemotional because the words used were rather cold in my personal opinion. I did not feel any warmth that was supposed to be there in that Chapter. And that whole banter at the dinner table during, if I remember correctly, breakfast was not handled very well either. It was pure silliness but I don't feel the teasing, I certainly did not feel the warmth. One problem is the words used.

And I feel the characters lacked personality, because of the limited time that the author used to build up the base of the story. Because it is script base, the great thing is you can imagine it yourself, how you as Tin Lok or Yuk Tung or even Takeshi would react. But reading it as a story, I feel something was lacking. We do know how the character feels, since the author made sure we know by injecting some emotions here and there and some dialogues like he knew he would do anything for her, she knew she would do anything for him. The thing is this story is full of "knowing what they would do for one another" or "willing to die for them to show how much they love them", "wanting to protect then" and yet I could also see plenty of blur people, people who are confused. Perhaps the author wanted it to be this way. The characters are not very well established even when it was Chapter 11.

There are plenty of characters in this story, the leads are Tin Lok and Yuk Tung. Much dialogues had been allocated to these two characters and yet the one that I found most interesting was actually Yin Cho. Is he good? Is he bad? The truth is Daniel Wu would be perfect for this role but I would have prefer Daniel to be Takeshi. Anyway, I am deviating from my original point.

There goes the bad stuff. Now the good stuff. 

One chapter that I thought the author handled very well was Chapter 9, though I would have wished it was more novel based than script based, because more words can be used to reflect the urgency of the situation. The story has intriguing love stories to it and I hope more complex relationships will be injected into the story, like what if Yuk Tung fell for the Japanese man who was responsible for her father's death? What if a character that we know really well dies?! When General Lee died, I actually felt nothing because not much time was spent into developing this character. Perhaps if Yin Cho die I would scream, though not much has been written about this character, except that he is very mysterious and his agenda is a bit blur to me. And there lies the potential of the story. The story is still nowhere near the proper story and only time will tell how the author will develop on it, but I only hope the author would be consistent and don't give us tragedies after another, thus making this into a cry-fest or worse, a comedy.

But one aspect of the story I must comment on. I have declared that I will not comment on the standard of English and I won't. But this author makes the same mistake as I in my Series reviews, such as writing "forget" instead of "forgive". Grammar mistakes are ok but to misled your readers is the ultimate no-no when it comes to writing a story. As a reader I hate second guessing what an author meant and it annoys me greatly to devote my time to correcting the words used by the author in my mind rather than being able to enjoy the story fully.

For example, and I hope the author won't take this as a personal attack but simply to remind her of the blatant mistakes she made throughout the story, not grammar just words;

"We, Japanese, don’t like F-E-C-K-L-E-S-S people.... you can circulate easily in Shanghai"

-For a moment I thought she meant Japanese do not like people without spots on their faces, as in freckles.  On second reading, I think she meant RECKLESS. And you don't circulate in China, roam around freely perhaps, freedom of movement perhaps,  but not circulate.

"gently burnishing his gun"

-I think she meant BRUSHING

" was totally loved at FIRST SIGH"

-this was a bit ambiguous. Maybe she really meant sighhhhhh but I think she meant SIGHT.

"SHIT…no more munitions [starts quickly search for them in his pocket, but to late…]"

- I really do think she meant AMMUNITIONS. And it is TOO not to. And perhaps consider "quickly search for ammunitions in his pocket, but it was already too late..." or "..alas, it was too late".

"Ting Fung (screeches): What!!??? Where are you now?"

- Probably SCREAMS. People don't screech.

"He can be so cute and death serious"

- Should have been DEAD serious. For a moment I thought someone died.

"Auntie Cheung's apparition interrupts her in the middle of her sentence"

-This one takes the cake as the most confusing of all unintentional mistakes. I was reading this and then I thought; "WHAT?! Auntie Cheung died????". It turns out that Auntie Cheung didn't die but the author meant APPEARANCE. Apparition means a ghost, a soul  appearing before ones eyes. And pity me, I re-read the whole chapter and finally realised I was duped into thinking this was  a ghost story as well.

The truth is I noticed the author uses a lot of BIG words, flowery words, very adult words, words that are way too formal in speech and so I give her more credit than what I have pointed out above. I hope she pays more attention to her choices of words because I hate laughing at this very serious story. I am not laughing because I am mean or anything but you just have to be more careful with your words, know what they mean. The last thing you want is your readers putting your story out of context. There is no universal rule as to what words to use or how BIG the words must be, and so if you do not know, better stick to the basic, using the simplest of words to create the fullest effect. For example, instead of;

"SHIT…no more ammunitions"

perhaps a simpler version like;

"SHIT…no more bullets"

And I didn't like some of the dialogues. Whatever I am going to say below is just my "pickiness", because like I said in a review before this, I am reading this story with my age and all as an influence as to how I'll treat this story.

"OK, I will go immediately. Contact you guys later. [after finishing the sentence, he then politely salutes and leaves Takeshi with Norika]"

"Lee: You are so selfish. Only think about yourself. And not for our country or for our citizens. I’m going back to the North in two days. So, if you change your mind and let me see the superior, call me then. But I doubt you will do it…"

Do you see what is the problem here? The first dialogue was between two assassins, and in many more dialogues between a superior and his men, the author would write;

"You GUYS....Go now GUYS".  A lot of GUYS. The truth is I think MEN is more appropriate. And the 2nd paragraph is actually between the General and his subordinate and yet the author wrote "You're so selfish". A bit inappropriate. I feel the author needs to rewrite some of these passages to make it more believable, not necessary accurate of course. For example, rearrange the words a bit...

"Lee: You are only concerned about yourself, such selfishness. Ever thought about our  country? The citizens of China? What about our people?.. I am leaving for the North in two days. If you ever changed your mind about the meeting between the superior and I, call me....But  I doubt you will do it…"

We have also a lot of Japanese words in here but luckily not so much that it will become a tedious read. But I feel though I have read books with foreign words and English language in one page, I would have preferred that the author be a bit more decisive as to what language she wants to use, because if she didn't provide a meaning for that word, I would have hate having to run to my dictionary. My view of a good story is one that doesn't seem like a chore to read it.

All in all, I shall summarize my view on this story.

First of all, the basis of the story is very entertaining and thrilling, and very very ambitious. Though there is nothing wrong with being script based as your story's format, as a reader I personally would have preferred a more narrative approach, because this will be the best way for us to know the characters more, though admittedly you can take this story and make it into a play if you want to, and therein lies the fun with this format.

The dialogue could be improved, using more ordinary but believable words, rearrange them. And it would help greatly if the author checks the words before using them, to avoid having one word that clearly does not represent what she has in mind.

BUT the most important of all, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL IMPORTANT CHANGES she should consider making to this story is not the story, not the approach but the colour of the fonts. Change that and the story will be a much more entertaining read.

Funn's Recommendation
The truth is I didn't quite like this story, because the fonts made such a bad first impression. Forcing myself to read more though my eyes hurt I thought this story has a pretty interesting and not so normal type of fan fiction story. You might like to give it a try, though I must warn you, you must decipher some of the words because wrong words were used. Ignore the unbelievably unrealistic dialogues between a superior and his subordinate and you'll quite like this story. But take my advice; the best way to read this story is to print it out, ask a bunch of your friends to sit around and just ACT it out. It will be more fun and less tedious to read. A good effort but definitely needs some fine tuning to make it better.