Void Wraith Origins is a prequel series to the popular six book long Void Wraith Saga series, which is highly rated and well reviewed, so I figured why not start from the chronological beginning? The first book in this series, Dryker's Folly, details the event that starts a war that will put humanity on the brink of extinction. A strange signal originates from Pluto and the closest ship is a mining vessel under the command of a washed up ex-military man, Captain Dryker. But before he can even get there, a fleet of alien ships arrives in our solar system, The Tigris, show up because they are also interested in the signal from Pluto. They appear near our sun because they possess a technology that allows them to use stars like wormholes. Of course our space fleets jump them, but they are militarily superior to anything we can muster. Except, of course, conveniently for the discoveries being made by Dryker on Pluto, which might hold the key to victory against these Tigris invaders. Very few would pick Captain Dryker to be the one human to be in a position to defend us against the Tigris, but he might just turn out to be the right man for the job.

This is a popular series on Audible, as is the main series mentioned earlier, but it just fell flat for me and I found myself questioning almost everything. Maybe it is because I lack the context of the main series which was published first, but ultimately I don't really think that was the issue. I found the plot points to be rather contrived and with the Tigris being a race of humanoid cat people, that use clan and ship names based on human cat species, it just felt like a badly written RPG module. They do try to explain away the naming similarity to some degree because there is a 3rd alien race, the Primo, that have been nurturing both species along for millennia. The Primo also conveniently infect us both with a virus that allows us to understand each other when talking, but that just added to my discontent. I appreciate an author that tries to offer up a unique story in a crowded genre, but this series just did not resonate for me, and after finishing this trilogy I have no plans to move on to the main series. The audible ratings certainly make it seem like my opinion is an outlier and others seem to really enjoy it, so YMMV. If you are interested in sci-fi with cat people then maybe read the many good reviews and give it a go.

The audiobook is narrated by Ryan Kennard Burke and he did a decent job, but his performance was not enough for me to move on to the main series.