We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(3) Base Camp
Perhaps it is better to say that Timescape starts out at base camp but then allows its readers to decide what path is right for them. You can take the easygoing scenic route and take in the sights spread across the horizon, or you can take the muscle-straining course and really give your mind a workout on those details. The following quote perfectly sums up what we're talking about:
Markham drew space-time diagrams and told Peterson how to understand them, stressing the choice of slanted coordinates. Peterson kept an intent expression through it all. Markham drew wavy lines to represent tachyons launched from one spot, and showed how, if they were reflected about in the laboratory, they could strike another portion of the lab at an earlier time. (4.48)
If you want to, you can really sit down and play the scientist with Timescape. You can contemplate how particles travel in waves and what the implications for a hypothetical faster-than-light particle would be. You can also explore why indium antimonide was chosen as the semiconductor for those tachyons. For this type of reader, Benford, an astrophysicist by trade, has left plenty of physics breadcrumbs to follow through various routes that will take you well beyond the book itself.
At the same time, if that's not your intellectual bag, then you can simply accept the science, focus on the human drama, and keep on keeping on. Tachyons can allow them to send messages back in time? Sure. Time is a type of metaphysical landscape rather than a series of causes and effects? Got it.
In other words, while certainly challenging in places, Timescape really is inviting to all types of readers with all types of interests and skill levels.