Novelist Orson Scott Card said, "Meyer writes with luminous clarity, never standing between the reader and the dream they share. She's the real thing". In an interview with "Newsweek", author Jodi Picoult said, "Stephenie Meyer has gotten people hooked on books, and that's good for all of us." Comparing Meyer to J. K. Rowling, Stephen King stated: "The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer, and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good". King went on to say that the appeal of her books were because, "[she's] opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books." American religious history scholar Jana Riess had mixed reactions to Meyer's novels. She found the Mormon theology which influences her imaginative works at times beautiful and complex. However, she qualifies Meyer as a gifted storyteller, not a gifted writer, noting numerous technical flaws in her novels. Furthermore, Riess criticized the "retrogressive gender stereotypes" in Meyer's novels.