Trackers (David Gerrold) Books in Order

The Trackers books feel like Gerrold giving himself permission to throw several favorite toys into the same box. Space opera, bounty hunters, vampires, dragons, rebels, androids, mutated species, and collapsing empires all show up here, and somehow the mix still hangs together. The result is faster and pulpier than some of his other work, but it is not mindless. It just likes moving.

The big idea is wonderfully messy.

The Phaestor were once engineered as humanity's protectors, but by the time Under the Eye of God begins, they have become the tyrants of the galaxy. They rule alongside their deadly Moktar Dragons and feed an empire built on terror, blood, and domination. Against them Gerrold sets a ragged alliance of humans, androids, bioforms, mercenaries, trackers, and various survivors who know they are outmatched but refuse to lie down.

That is why the first book works. It does not pretend the resistance is tidy. The people fighting back are the kinds of people who end up on the edges of systems anyway: hired hunters, damaged veterans, oddballs, and creatures with their own grudges. The setting gives Gerrold room to play with classic adventure structure while also leaning into grotesque imagery and sharp reversals. A planet like Thoska-Roole can hold a last stand, a joke, a monster reveal, and a political betrayal in quick succession.

A Covenant of Justice pushes the series further into rebellion. Blood disease, betrayal, shifting loyalties, and the larger mechanics of toppling a monstrous regime all come into play. The second book makes clear that defeating the Phaestor is not just a matter of blowing up the right enemy installation. Someone also has to imagine what should replace them.

That keeps the books from becoming empty spectacle.

If you want sober, hard-science plausibility, this is probably not the Gerrold series to start with. If you want a wild but readable hybrid of monster fiction and space adventure, Trackers is the one. The tone is urgent, colorful, and sometimes gloriously strange, but underneath the strange surface is a familiar Gerrold interest in chosen alliances, moral pressure, and the question of how damaged people decide they are still responsible for the future.