When considering David Gerrold's The War Against the Chtorr series, one must always keep in mind that somehow, somewhere, an editor bought this book for exorbitant sums of money. Simply bad science fiction is rather hard to come by, simply because people won't buy it. On that reasoning, one can't simply dismiss the series as bad literature.
I read all four of the extant Chtorr books, sometimes with a sense of dogged perseverance usually reserved for English Literature; at times, they were thrilling, and at others I skipped entire chapters while waiting for the plot to resume.
One of Gerrold's damning literary sins is that he periodically (we're talking every four chapters or so) arranges an aside during which a character can lecture, uninterrupted, for pages on end about sociology, philosophy, ethics or ecology. The ecology lectures were the most tolerable, considering the books are about the ecological takeover of earth by an alien mastermind. The rest, however, were particularly tedious, considering that many of them were flashbacks with no relevance to the plot of the novels. The plot, as it were, seems to go in circles of blowing-things-to-pieces-and-then-wooing-the-gorgeous-redheads. The most interesting character, I fear, is Ted/Tanjy, who would have made an infinitely more interesting protagonist than Gerrold's--who does nothing but whine, allow himself to be manipulated, blow things up, and apologize for his failures.
I suppose what published these books was Gerrold's very good descriptive flair. When he's not preaching to the reader, there's a very real emotional and tactile subtext to the works; I for instance almost cried during a scene halfway into, I believe, the second book. That was when Ted, to whom I had become emotionally attached, cuts off a last conversation with the protagonist to go 'on duty' with the Telepathy Corps--an experience that will eradicate his personality within months. But other than a few points of emotional tension, Gerrold's characters are unilaterally flat, almost stereotypical--to the point where he could have rewritten the cast roster as shady government agents #1, #2, #3; military grunts #1 - #27, hot chicks #1 and #2, scientists #1, #2, and #3 ad nauseum.
In the face of all this, even I have to wonder why his texts sold. Even the titles seem to transgress on good literary taste. Even Heinlein is better than this.